A thriller set among the child labourers in a 19th-century mine. The author also wrote "World Eater", "The Thousand Eyes of Night", "Ghost Messengers" and "Brother in the Land", for which he won the Children's book Award. He also won the Carnegie Medal for "Stone Cold" in 1993.
Robert Swindells left school at fifteen to work on a local newspaper. At seventeen, he joined the RAF for three years, then trained and worked as a teacher. Now a full-time writer, he is the author of a number of bestselling titles for the Random House children's list. In 1994 he won the Carnegie Medal for STONE COLD (Hamish Hamilton), a teenage novel about a serial killer.
RUBY TANYA won the Salford Children's Book Award 2005.
