Encounters

Longlisted for The CILIP Carnegie Medal 2018

Zimbabwe, 1994. A group of children spot peculiar lights in the sky over the grounds of their school.

From this moment on, six young people's lives are changed forever.
Gary hides the anguish he feels now his mum's left, acting out in fury and hatred. Chloe has no words for the thing she fears most every day. Karl is the headmaster's son, now fallen from grace. Tendai knows he can never live up to his grieving father's ideals. And Sixpence watches all, knowing he'll never be like these other children.

All of them have seen something they can't explain. In amongst these tangled, tortured lives, comes a group of psychologists to verify the spookily similar claims of every witness.

Their daughter, Holly, can tell there's more to it than aliens or mass hysteria - can she reveal the dark truths that haunt them?

Inspired by true accounts, this is the long-awaited new novel from Costa-award-winner Jason Wallace.