The days between Christmas and New Year's Eve are dead days, when spirits roam and magic shifts restlessly just beneath the surface of our lives. A lot can happen in the dead days. There is a magician called Valerian who must save his own life, or pay the price for the pact he made with evil so many years ago. But alchemy and sorcery are no match against the demonic power pursuing him. Helping him is his servant Boy, a child with no name and no past, given to Valerian by Fate when he fell from his hiding place in an old church. And the quick-witted Willow is with them as they dig in death-fields at midnight, and are swept into the sprawling blackness of a subterranean city on a journey from which there is no escape. Unknown to any of them it is Boy who holds the key to all their destinies. His revelations will be shocking. Set in dark, dangerous cities and in the frozen countryside of a distant time and place The Book of Dead Days, beautifully evoked and dramatic, conjures a spell-binding story of power, corruption and desperate magic

Everything you know is wrong – the truth starts here… Have you ever imagined how the world could be different? Ever wondered what might have been? Here, eight award-winning authors explore alternative past, presents and futures – and their stories show just how easily everything we take for granted could slip away…