Summer at World's End

Tom, Carrie, Em and Michael are still living on their own at World's End and, in between wondering where the next meal will be coming from, and trying to avoid interfering grown-ups, they are never short of fun and excitement. But then Carrie plunges into another dangerous rescue operation and Charlie the dog saves her life only by putting his own at risk. Desperately the children struggle to save Charlie from a terrible fate; but it is a race against time... This is the second book about the extraordinary family who live at World's End.

Great grand daughter to Charles Dickens, Monica (1915-1992) was born into an upper middle class family. Disillusioned with the world she was brought up in - she was expelled from St Paul's Girls' School in London for throwing her school uniform over Hammersmith Bridge - Dickens then decided to go into service, despite coming from the privileged class; her experiences as a cook and general servant would form the nucleus of her first book, One Pair Of Hands in 1939.

Dickens married an American Navy officer, Roy O. Stratton, and spent much of her adult life in Massachusetts and Washington D.C., but the majority of writing continued to be set in Britain. Her book of 1953, No More Meadows, reflected her work with the NSPCC and she later helped to found the American Samaritans in Massachusetts. Between 1970 and 1971 she wrote a series of children's books known as The Worlds End Series which dealt with rescuing animals, and to some extent children. After the death of her husband in 1985, Dickens returned to England where she continued to write until her death aged 77.