British author Vivien Alcock got a late start as a writer of books for children. Her first novel, The Haunting of Cassie Palmer, was published in 1980, when the author was fifty-six. Once started, however, Alcock "wrote fluently and confidently," according to Julia Eccleshare in the Guardian of London, producing over twenty books in the next twenty years. Nicholas Tucker, writing in London's Independent, characterized these novels as having "distinct originality and quality." In addition to The Haunting of Cassie Palmer, Alcock also wrote such popular titles as The Stonewalkers, The Mysterious Mr. Ross, The Cuckoo Sister, The Trial of Anna Cotman, The Monster Garden, Travelers by Night, A Kind of Thief, Singer to the Sea God, The Red-Eared Ghosts, and her final book, The Boy Who Swallowed a Ghost. By the time of her death in 2003, Alcock had become a "widely admired" writer, as Eccleshare went on to...