Jack is the chosen one, the Radiant Boy the Magus needs in order to perfect the alchemy that will transform London of the 1600s into a golden city.

But Jack isn't the kind of boy who will do what he is told by an evil genius, and he is soon involved in an epic and nail-biting adventure, featuring dragons, knights and Queen Elizabeth I, as he battles to save London.

Jeanette Winterson's first novel for children, Tanglewreck, was widely admired. Here in her second, readers will once more relish her free-spirited literary inventiveness and style.