The Dial and the Seed: The Tales of Ausonia, #1

In the spring of 1940, with the world holding its breath across the Channel, four children are sent from Birmingham to their grandparents' cottage — Thomas, who is sixteen and carries more than a boy should; Katie, who notices what others miss; Samuel, who wants to know the reason for everything; and Audrey, the youngest, who has begun to hear something the others cannot.

It is Audrey who hears it first. A sound, faint and far off, coming from the tall grandfather clock in the library — a clock that has kept a strange sort of time, and has been waiting, it seems, a very long while.

On the other side of it lies a country that was sung into being, and whose song has begun to fail. Something there has been waiting a long while too — and it is said that what has been waiting is a King. Four children who can hear the song may be nearer to the heart of things than they know, with much still to learn about how to listen.

A tale for readers of all ages — for children, and for everyone who still knows how to read as one.