Ali Sparkes is a fabulous British children's author and back at Wychwood by popular demand. Her debut book The Shapeshifter: Finding the Fox was nominated for the 2007 Bolton Children's Book Award. She has also won two Blue Peter awards for Book I Couldn't Put Down and Book Of The Year for Frozen in Time. Car Jacked was one of the best-selling books in our Waterstones marquee last year!

Ali goes running every morning, has a fab family, visits lots of schools and libraries and is so busy that we are pleased she has found time to join in Wychwood fun this year!

Thunderstuck

What if your new best friend was a ghost? Getting struck by lightning whilst huddling under a tree isn't exactly the way Alisha and Theo would have chosen to get out of sports day. Surviving the strike makes them see life differently. It also makes them notice Doug and Lizzie. Struck by lightning under that same tree on the common in 1975, the two teenagers have been hanging out there ever since. Doug and Lizzie are funny, clever, brave – and quite happy about making friends with a pair of ten-year-olds. OK, fair point, they are dead, and Doug's trousers are worryingly flared. But you can't have everything. But something sinister is going on at school – although only Theo and Alisha seem to be able to see it. What can it mean when ragged faceless entities keep staring in through the windows? Not all ghosts are friendly like Doug and Lizzie but are these phantoms really the harbingers of doom for all the kids at Beechwood Junior?

A fun and fast-paced ghostly mystery with lightning strikes, floating phantoms, and four fantastic friends just trying to get on with their everyday lives or deaths.