Welcome to Ballskirk, the rubbishist town in England. Home to pound shops, pebbledash and peculiar people. It’s also home to Granny Eyeball, a tight-fisted old bag who has dedicated her life to making other people miserable. She’s famously vile and she’s got a secret stash of cash hidden away, gathering dust. Venture out to her rundown farmhouse and you’ll find her hunting squirrels and making life unbearable for 13 year old Joanna Gormley.

Joanna’s parents mysteriously disappeared when she was a toddler, leaving her in the care of her distant relative, Granny Eyeball. Her daily routine involves performing endless and increasingly bizarre chores before and after attending the worst school in England. At school Joanna is equally unloved, branded a freak by her fellow students and targeted by the criminally insane dinnerladies Celia and Delia and dinnerman,Fig.

But one day Joanna stumbles across as strangely familiar cottage and strikes up a friendship with the elderly owner Isabelle, who provides the first clue as to what may have happened to her parents. Together the pair come up with a plan to give Granny Eyeball a taste of her own medicine, stealing back the fortune that is rightfully Joanna’s.

Aimed at the 8 – 12 age group, Granny Eyeball features illustrations from the brilliant Brandon Gregory and is the first book in The Ballskirk Chronicles. A silly and anarchic page turner that parents will enjoy as much as their kids.