

It's just over a week before Christmas and Peter Schock is looking forward to a belated birthday treat - spending some precious time with his dad.

Its narrative grips the reader as tightly as the hangman's noose that haunts the tale. The result is an attention-grabbing story with a fast-moving plot that switches back and forth between the 18th and 21st centuries. As a mother of two, Linda Buckley-Archer wrote the tale for her own children. A highly original cross between a historical novel, a thriller and a sci-fi page-turner, Gideon the Cutpurse is carefully researched to reflect an accurate portrait of 18th century England. An academic and a fan of children's fantasy fiction, Linda was inspired to write her first book after listening to historian Lucy Moore discussing aspects of 18th century crime. Linda Buckley-Archer's debut novel is the first part of a fantasy adventure trilogy. And along they way they form a bond that, they hope, will stand strong in the face of unfathomable treachery.įilled with adventure, intrigue, and plenty of twists and turns, this start to a trilogy is written by a history scholar and wordsmith who makes the extraordinary believable, and will keep you on the edge of your seat. Soon Gideon, Peter, and Kate are swept into a journey through the dangerous underworld of eighteenth-century London, traveling the routes of notorious highwaymen and even entering King George’s palace. Before Gideon and the children have a chance to gather their wits, the Tar Man takes off with the machine-and Peter and Kate’s only chance of getting home. Peter Schock and Kate Dyer have fallen straight from the twenty-first century, thanks to a faulty experiment with an antigravity machine.

Suddenly the sky peels away like fabric, and from the gaping hole fall two curious-looking children. Gideon Seymour, thief and gentleman, is hiding from the villainous Tar Man. Travel to criminal underworld of eighteenth-century London in this start to a trilogy that Entertainment Weekly calls “a rollicking historical adventure.”
