'If an Outsider wields the blade, the House of Koronos burns...'

An endless winter.

A plague-haunted land.

A dying people.

**Winter has been colder than anyone can remember - and there is no spring. The terrible eruption of Thalakrea has shrouded the sky in ash and blotted out the Sun.

The winds of Fate bring Hylas to the island of Keftiu. He is desperate to find his friends: Pirra the daughter of the High Priestess and Havoc the lion cub. But Keftiu has suffered more than anywhere from the fury of the gods, and the once-prosperous island has been ravaged by cold, famine and plague.

As Hylas sets off alone, he is tormented by the fear that Pirra and Havoc may not have survived the winter...**

'Electrifying' - Independent on Sunday

'The reader's attention is caught from the first line...spellbinding' - Telegraph

'Set to become another children's classic' - Books for Keeps

Michelle Paver was born in Malawi in 1960 and moved to England when she was three. After gaining a degree in biochemistry from Oxford, she became a partner in a City law firm, but gave that up to write full-time. To research her stories about animals and the distant past, she has travelled in the Arctic, the Mediterranean and Egypt, swum with dolphins and killer whales, and encountered bears, boars and wolves. She is the author of the internationally bestselling Chronicles of Ancient Darkness, the final book of which won the 2010 Guardian Children's Fiction Prize.