The Small Party

Lillian Beckwith

Apr 2012 · Pan Macmillan

About this ebook

When her children wake in the dead of night to loud bangs and flashing lights, Ruth is quick to dismiss the commotion as a simple thunderstorm. Yet it soon becomes apparent that their island port is under attack, besieged by a gang of violent rebel forces. And they're heading their way . . .

Forced to flee their home, the family begin a perilous journey of escape. But Ruth could never have imagined the terrible scenes that they are forced to confront, as the anarchists wreak havoc, and every islander is out for themselves in a desperate fight for survival.

The small party of refugees face unimaginable dangers, and with only a desperate mother's strength to keep them alive, they will be forced to rely on others for help. But whom can they really trust?

About the author

Lilian Comber wrote fiction and non-fiction for both adults and children under the pseudonym Lillian Beckwith. She is best known for her series of comic novels based on her time living on a croft in the Scottish Hebrides.

Beckwith was born in Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, in 1916, where her father ran a grocery shop. The shop provided the background for her memoir About My Father's Business, a child’s eye view of a 1920s family. She moved to the Isle of Skye with her husband in 1942, and began writing fiction after moving to the Isle of Man with her family twenty years later. She also completed a cookery book, Secrets from a Crofter’s Kitchen (Arrow, 1976).

Since her death, Beckwith’s novel A Shine of Rainbows has been made into a film starring Aidan Quinn and Connie Nielsen, which in 2009 won ‘Best Feature’ awards at the Heartland and Chicago Children’s Film Festivals.