Counting Stars

'We listen to the truth, the memories, the bits made up. We gaze at each other. We eat warm buttered toast. We know that the sun will fall, that the children and the birds will be silent. We know that we will return to separate lives and separate deaths. We listen to the stories, that for an impossible afternoon hold back the coming dark.'

David Almond's extraordinary novels have established him as an author of unique insight and skill. These stories encapsulate his endless sense of mystery and wonderment, as they weave a tangible tapestry of growing up in a large Catholic family. Here are the kernels of his novels - joy and fear, darkness and light, love, death, the bonds of ignorance and prejudice, the healing power of memory and the imagination - a collection of exquisite sensitivity and tenderness.