What if revenge were a monster of your own creation? If all you needed to summon this monster was enough hatred and enough imagination? Which of you would really be the monster? One boy is about to find out.The New York Timesbestselling author Brian Jacques (Loamhedge; The Angel's Command) spins six all-new tales of horror and suspense. Read on, but be careful of what brews in your heart. You may just find yourself the next victim of the Ribbajack. . . .: Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

Jacques, working more in the vein of his Seven Strange and Ghostly Tales than his Redwall fantasies, offers up a half dozen short horror/morality tales. The title story concerns Archibald Smifft, a truly fiendish 11-year-old being raised at a British boarding school, whose evil plan to conjure a fearsome beast called the Ribbajack backfires in spectacular fashion. In "A Smile and a Wave," a solitary trip through a haunted school library teaches a girl gratitude for her home and mother. "The All Ireland Champion Versus the Nye Add," a neatly constructed fish tale, crackles with the feel of a story told aloud at a pub, thanks to a spirited narrator ("Well, I've told you the tale now, so I'll go on me way an' bid ye good day. But it's a true story...."). The volume closes with "Rosie's Pet," a werewolf yarn that revels in its British trappings and, especially, in its own playful attitude. The plots are familiar and at times feel fragmentary, but Jacques's deft wordplay and masterly tone add compensatory gusts of pleasurable thrills. Ages 10-up. (May) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

Gr 5-8-Jacques offers six original ghost stories to follow up on Seven Strange and Ghostly Tales (Putnam, 1991). The title story is more grotesque than scary, and the ghost in "A Smile and a Wave" is inexplicably evil, existing only to scare the main character into wearing her detested coat. The most satisfying selections are "Miggy Mags and the Malabar Sailor," in which a mongoose champions a young girl against her abusive uncle, and "Rosie's Pet," a preadolescent werewolf love story. The heavy northern English dialect used in the tellings would work well in an audio book, but may deter some readers. While this is an acceptable addition to general collections, true fans of the scary and strange will find more satisfaction in the short-story collections by Australian writer Paul Jennings, such as Unreal! (Formac, 1992).-Farida S. Dowler, formerly at Bellevue Regional Library, WA Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

Gr. 5-8. The author of the wildly popular Redwall books spins half a dozen wickedly imagined yarns filled with surprises and the cheerful satisfaction of seeing some thoroughly nasty villains come to grief. Some children will be reminded of Roald Dahl, but Jacques, a natural-born storyteller, is very much the master of his own material and writes tales that almost demand to be read aloud--at night, in a darkened room, by flickering candle or firelight. Although not great literature, these tales are a salutary reminder that books can be read simply for entertainment. And that is meant as high praise, indeed. --Michael Cart Copyright 2004 Booklist From: Syndetics Solutions, Inc. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

Brian Jacques was born in Liverpool, England on June 15th, 1939. Along with forty percent of the population of Liverpool, his ancestral roots are in Ireland, County Cork to be exact. He grew up in the area around the Liverpool docks. His interest in adventure stories began at an early age with reading the books of Daniel Defo and Arthue Conan Doyle. He attended St. John's School, an inner city school that had its playground on the roof.

After Brian finished school at fifteen, he set out to find adventure as a merchant seaman. He travelled to many far away ports, including New York, Valparaiso, San Francisco, and Yokohama. Tiring of the lonely life of a sailor, he returned to Liverpool where he worked as a railway fireman, a longshoreman, a long-distance truck driver, a bus driver, a boxer, a bobby or Police Constable, a postmaster, and a stand-up comic. During the sixties, he and his two brothers, formed a folksinging group known as The Liverpool Fishermen. Mr. Jacques has written both poetry and music, but he began his writing career in earnest as a playwright. His three stage plays Brown Bitter, Wet Nellies, and Scouse have been performed at the Everyman Theatre.

Mr. Jacques wrote Redwall for the children at the Royal Wavertree School for the Blind in Liverpool, where as a truck driver, he delivered milk. His style of writing is very descriptive, because of the nature of his first audience, for whom he painted pictures with words, so that they could see them in their imaginations. His writing gained acclaim when Alan Durband, his childhood English teacher, read Redwall, and showed it to a publisher without telling Brian. This event led to a contract for the first five books in the Redwall series.

He now hosts his own weekly radio show, Jakestown, on BBC Radio Merseyside. It airs Sunday afternoons on 95.8 FM in Liverpool, where Brian shares his comedy and wit, and plays his favourites from the world of opera.

(Bowker Author Biography) Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.