As autumn begins, Moss and friends travel to their former home in Ash Row, to find the rare mortal child who can both see and talk to them. The tiny beings know they should be brave and talk back – this is their chance to help reverse the fading of ancient Cumulus, who has now almost disappeared entirely. But they soon realize fading is connected to their role in the world … Can the Hidden Folk prove that guardians of the Wild World are needed after all?
Melissa Harrison is an award-winning novelist and nature writer who lives in Suffolk. Her novel All Among the Barley (2018) won the European Union Prize for Literature. At Hawthorn Time (2015) was shortlisted for the Costa Novel of the Year award and longlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, while Clay (2013), won the Portsmouth First Fiction award, was selected for Amazon’s ‘Rising Stars’ programme and chosen by Ali Smith as a Book of the Year. Her non-fiction book Rain: Four Walks in English Weather (2016) was longlisted for the Wainwright Prize, and she was Series Editor on four anthologies of writing about the seasons, published in 2016 in support of The Wildlife Trusts.
Melissa contributes a monthly Nature Notebook column to The Times and is the writer and presenter of the hit nature podcast ‘The Stubborn Light of Things’. She has appeared on Springwatch and Springwatch Unsprung, and speaks regularly on the radio.