The Various

steve augarde

A captivating story of courage and strength against terrible odds, this is the story of Midge, left to stay with her eccentric uncle during the holidays, and her adventures with the Various, a band of fairies. The existence of the Various, who are strange, wild, and sometimes even deadly, has been kept secret since the beginning of time, but when their world begins to clash with the human world, they are threatened with extinction.

This wonderfully imaginative story of love and loyalty is the first in a powerful trilogy.

Genres fantasyyoung adultfictionmiddle gradechildrensfairiesadventuremagicfaeparanormal

448 pages, Paperback

First published August 7,2003

Series

Touchstone Trilogy

This edition

Format: 448 pages, Paperback
Published: November 8, 2005 by Yearling
ISBN: 9780440420293
ASIN: 0440420296
Language: English

About the author

steve augarde

I began writing children's books when I was at art college, which means that I've spent over thirty years as a children's author. Must be nearly time to grow up. About eighty titles published to date, I think. These include story books and pop-ups for younger readers, as well as my more recent novels for older children. I'm also an illustrator and paper-engineer, and you can see examples of this type of work around the site.

Sometimes I provide the paper engineering for pop-up books by other artists and children's authors - Jan Pienkowski, for example, Emma Chichester-Clark and Damien Hirst.

Finally I'm a semi-pro musician, playing mostly jazz. I provided the music and artwork for two BBC children's television series of Bump the elephant. Mind you, that was ages ago, and so it's high time somebody sampled it for a dance track and made me a fortune.

My first major work for older children was The Touchstone Trilogy, completed in January 2008, the three titles being The Various, Celandine and Winter Wood. The Various was an award winner in The Nestle Smarties Book Prize 2003. Both Celandine and Winter Wood have been nominated for the Carnegie Medal.