This summer

1. This summer the Earth will be ready to accept a new species…

2. Dark Fire is coming

3. The cover…

5. The enemy…

7. The evidence…

9. The story…

10. there will beMystery

11. It is now twenty-two days since the so-called ‘Northern Fog’ arrived… • and still no-one has been able to comprehend it, analyse it or in any way explain it…

12. Are we, as a growing body of people seem to insist, being visited by something that has yet to show itself – • and has the power to resist being shown…?

13. there will beTension

14. Zanna steadied her nerves and came to the doorway. “How did you get in?” • David moved his hand palm down across the table and lifted it to reveal a key. “I used to live here, remember?” • Zanna stared at the key as if she’d like to melt it. “It would have been polite to knock.”

15. there will beAnswers

16. “Why me?” said Bergstrom. “Because of what you have seen,” said the bear.

17. “The writings in the caves? They are writings, aren’t they?”

18. The bear tilted its black-tipped snout into the wind. “They are a record of a meeting. They are the words of dragons…”

19. there will beDanger

20. “Get down!” Tam shouted, pulling Lucy flat. A small boulder came hurtling towards them. It deflected off his shoulder with a bruising thump. • Lucy squealed as shale began to swirl around her head, catching and pulling at her wild red hair. “Something’s digging into me!” she cried. • Tam could feel it too. Stones, underneath them, rising out of the ground. If they didn’t move quickly, they’d be thrown into the air or turned into sieves…

21. there will beHumour

22. “You can’t argue this,” David said. “There’s no knowing what will happen if Gwillan starts to roam.” • “He was a house dragon,” Zanna hit back. “He watered plants, he dusted, he fed the cat. He had no special abilities other than kindness. What’s the worst he’s going to do? A bit of extreme ironing?”

23. there will beNew characters

24. Ms Gee lowered her hand. She was wearing a woollen tweed suit all the colours of vegetable soup, and a pair of dull brown shoes. “I don’t have time for this prattle,” she said. “Your insignificant presence is of little interest to me. In a matter of moments the sun will be aligned with the eye of the cairn and what is hidden beneath these hills will be mine to command – • you will be consumed in the dragon’s first breath...”

25. there will beA deadly foe

26. With a slapping noise the monster turned its head. Its hideous face, thickened by stubs at the frontal lobes, looked with disdain at the mess it had grown from. • And then it ate the mess it had grown from, sucking the corpse into an ‘o’ shaped mouth haunted by a filter of needle-shaped teeth.

27. and there will beDRAGONS

28. …jewelled eyes, small horns, • indescribably scary teeth.

29. a pattern of semi-radiant fins, as precise and threatening as the thorns on rose stems, followed the outlines of its skull…

30. …whatever structures composed its eyes shifted like a set of tectonic plates.

31. the scales tensed in a kind of autonomic way, interlocking like a row of Roman battle shields...

32. With near-preternatural speed, it realigned its nostrils like a double-barrelled gun…

33. The bronze-scaled juvenile, Grockle - • fearless, • breathtaking, • and huge.

34. from July 2nddragons will be back

35. DARK FIRE book 5 of The Last Dragon Chronicles at all good book shops

36. The best of the series so far…

37. And there will be more…