There are pictures in Jeth’s head and they make his world different. Dark memories and cartoon fantasies, they make him special – or strange. After his mum has her “trouble” he finds himself staying with posh relatives so distant he didn’t know they existed. And Todd, the spoilt boy who collects dead things, doesn’t want him around. When Jeth sees a single white deer in the forest, life takes on a new dimension. Alone in the woods by night, he meets the runaway Zora, who lives with the deer but might have landed by spaceship from an even stranger world. Jeth has more secrets than anyone could imagine, but no one to trust with them. As the past overlaps with the present, it’s hard to tell what’s real and where true danger lies.

THE JUDAS DEER was inspired by a real-life sighting of a white deer, the only one in the whole of Ashridge Forest near where Sue lives.