Twelve-year-old Extolziby lives with his family of not so lovable rogues, the Gruffs, on a crime ridden housing scheme in Scotland. When he is almost killed in a car accident, he finds himself transported to a secret Oxford college where kids who have suffered terrible trauma are turned into super-human beings. A fun, action-packed adventure set amongst the dreaming spires of the world's most famous university, Extolziby Gruff is the first in a series of middle grade books from thriller writer, Sean Black.
Author
I write the Ryan Lock series of thrillers, which feature ex-military bodyguard Ryan Lock and his partner, former Marine, Ty Johnson. The first two books in the series, Lockdown and Deadlock, hit the Official UK Top 50 Bestseller Chart, and the third, Gridlock, has just been released in hardback. They have have also been translated into Dutch, German, and Russian. I'm a firm believer in hands-on research, also known as 'any excuse to get out of the house', so before I wrote Lockdown, I trained for a month with former members of the Royal Military Police's specialist close protection unit. That turned out to be great preparation for Deadlock, which I researched by spending time inside Pelican Bay Supermax in California (see the TV interview on my author page). I recently completed a desert survival course in Arizona and ventured into the tunnels under Las Vegas, all as preparation for a new standalone thriller I will begin work on once I have completed the fourth Ryan Lock book. Before I became a full-time novelist, I taught college and wrote television drama. I'm an Oxbridge and Ivy League graduate – try not to hold that against me.
