Piers Torday
Bestselling author of multiple middle-grade books for children, including the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize winner The Dark Wild.
Piers Torday began his career in theater and then television as a producer and writer. His first book for children, The Last Wild, was shortlisted for the Waterstones Children’s Book Award, nominated for the CILIP Carnegie Medal, and is being adapted for the stage by the Unicorn and National Theatre. Other books include The Dark Wild (Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize), There May Be a Castle (People’s Book Award finalist), The Lost Magician series (Teach Primary Book Award), and the Midnight Treasure series (the first of which was a Waterstones Children’s Book of the Month).
His latest book is Tree Thing, and his work has been translated into 14 languages. His plays include the world premiere stage adaptation of John Masefield’s The Box of Delights (Royal Shakespeare Company), stage versions of A Christmas Carol and The Wind in the Willows (Wilton’s Music Hall), and Plum: Homage to Happiness, a tribute to the life and work of P.G. Wodehouse starring Sir Stephen Fry (Wilton’s).
The son of Paul Torday (Salmon Fishing in the Yemen), he completed his father’s final unfinished novel, The Death of an Owl, and co-founded the Paul Torday Memorial Prize for Debut Novelists over 60.
His journalism includes features and reviews for The Author, The Guardian, Daily Express, the Literary Review, The Scotsman, and The Spectator. He has served as a judge for the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize, the Costa Book Awards, the British Book Awards, and the BookTrust Lifetime Achievement Award and was on the international selection panel for the fourth Irish Laureate for Fiction. Piers is also a Trustee of the Unicorn Theatre, a Patron of Shrewsbury Book Fest, and an Artistic Associate at Wilton’s Music Hall.
Born in the north of England, he now lives in London with his husband and a very naughty dog.
Piers’s Genres
- Children’s Fiction
- Middle-Grade (All genres)
Tree Thing
Once, in a faraway land, a green thing squeezed out of the earth. The mysterious Tree Thing, which changes Marlo’s life forever.
Nothing grows in Marlo’s valley, and it’s a struggle to survive. But when his squirrel Rinti finds a glowing emerald acorn, it grows into a miraculous Tree Thing.
Tree Thing changes everything, bringing life and hope. And when the shadowy Rider arrives with an axe, Marlo needs all his bravery and ingenuity to stand between triumph and disaster.
Wolf Crown
The spellbinding follow-up to Midnight Treasure. In a world of vampirs and werwolves, Tibor and Roza are heirs to the throne. They’re the only people alive who can defeat the vampir emperor, the White Prince—if only they could agree on how.
Join them on their epic treasure hunt for the long-lost Wolf Crown. Can they outwit the White Prince’s spies, dragons, and werwolves—before it’s too late?
Letters to a Dog
Jamie is in hospital waiting for a life-changing operation. And to make a difficult time even harder, he’s fallen out with his dad and refuses to speak to him when he comes to visit.
To keep his spirits up, nurse Shirley suggests Jamie write a letter to the dog he desperately wants to adopt from the local dog home. But imagine his surprise when Dog writes back!
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