LAVENDER AND HADDOCK: Part One of 'The Trouble with Wyrms' Trilogy

England in 1912 – suspicious of war and of Germany in particular, not the best of times for a group of women to appear in tweeds and sensible shoes, looking for all the world like Valkyries out for a picnic.

Mistaken for spies and suffragettes in equal measure, these charming ladies have arrived from a distant planet a little to the left and slightly to the right of the buckle on Orion’s belt. They have one purpose in mind, to find the Stately Wyrms of England and defeat the evil usurper of the Throne of Wyrm, the sorcerer Tarantulus Spleen – a terrifying tyrant of a man with a face like a bluebottle.

Vermyn Stench, the head of Spleen’s Secret Service, has tracked the Sisterhood to the quiet Derbyshire village of Sodden-On-The-Bog and has sent his army of rats in pursuit. Rats, big rats, bloody big rats – rats that could go through your undercarriage like a doctor’s thermometer. Rats with bowler hats and shot guns and a hatred of anything tweed - rats that appear suddenly from nowhere, take over your pub and throw the landlord out the window. Add to this mix a touch of witchcraft, a whiff of perfume, strange snoring noises coming from deep below the village square and a member of parliament taken to shaving off his moustache, wearing dresses and entertaining the military, only then will you realize why the entire village is better off at the bottom of a reservoir than a place on the map marked ‘Here be Germs.'

Lavender and Haddock - the first in a trilogy of books recounting the quest of a group of women all named after fish to find peace, enlightenment and the Stately Wyrms of England.