Melvin Burgess

Writer - fiction/children's

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Books

Books

Melvin Burgess was born in 1954 and was brought up in Sussex and Berkshire. He started writing in his twenties, and wrote on and off for fifteen years before having his first book, THE CRY OF THE WOLF, published in 1990. In 1997 his controversial bestseller JUNK won the Guardian Children's Fiction Award and the Carnegie Medal. It was also shortlisted for the 1998 Whitbread Children's Book of the Year. Four of his novels have been shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal: THE CRY OF THE WOLF, AN ANGEL FOR MAY, THE BABY AND FLY PIE and THE GHOST BEHIND THE WALL. THE LOST WITCH, was published in 2018 by Andersen Press and is a thrilling fantasy for young adults about magic, myth and following your instincts. 

According to the Guardian, 'In the UK, fiction for "young adults" has grown hugely over the past decade...The godfather of this new fiction is Melvin Burgess.'

Twenty years since it was first published, JUNK was awarded the YA Book Prize special achievement award. Melvin Burgess now writes full-time and lives in Yorkshire.

 

Melvin's first adult novel, LOKI, a re-telling of the Norse myths through the mischievous Loki, was published by Coronet (Hodder) in 2022 and Pegasus Books in the US in 2023. Praise for LOKI:

‘A relentlessly paced run-through of the life and times of the trickster god of Norse mythology’

Daily Mail

 

‘A brilliantly original take on the mischievous mythological figure’

Big Issue

 

‘Told with wit, verve and some decidedly adolescent scatological humour, it’s a book that exerts a curious charm’

Mail on Sunday

 

‘His prose is electrical, crackling with a mischievous charge’

Buzz magazine

 

‘A spirited retelling’

i

 

‘Beautifully lyrical’

SFX magazine

 

‘Burgess is capable of chapters that brim with numinous light’

Guardian

Children's

Publication DetailsNotes

THE HIT

2013

UK: Random House/Hammer

A new drug is out. Everyone is talking about it. The Hit. Take it, and you have one amazing week to live. It's the ultimate high - at the ultimate price.

Adam is tempted. Life is rubbish: his girlfriend's over him, his brother's gone. So what's he got to lose? Everything, as it turns out. It's up to his girlfriend Lizzie to show him...

KILL ALL ENEMIES

2011

World All Languages: Puffin

Everyone says fourteen year-old Billie is nothing but trouble. A fighter. A danger to her family and friends. But her care worker sees someone different.

Her classmate Rob is big, strong. He can take care of himself and his brother. But his violent stepdad sees someone to humiliate.

And Chris is struggling at school. He just doesn't want to be there. But his dad sees a useless no-hoper.

Billie, Rob and Chris each have a story to tell. But there are two-sides to every story and the queston is... who do you believe?

SARA'S FACE

2006

HB: Andersen Press PB: Puffin

Sarah is going to have a face transplant. She has allowed herself to be drawn into the orbit of a highly manipulative and ruthless pop-star. He is going to take her discarded face to cover his own scarred and damaged one. But, as the time of the operation approaches, those closest to her suspect that Sarah is changing her mind. Is she being pressured into it? Is the wealthy pop-star her benefactor - or her gaoler?

Fiction

Publication DetailsNotes

THE LOST WITCH

2018

Andersen Press

Bea has started to hear and see things that no one else can – creatures, voices, visions. Then strangers visit Bea and tell her she is different: she has the rare powers of a witch. They warn her she is being hunted. Her parents think she is hallucinating and needs help. All Bea wants to do is get on with her life, and to get closer to Lars, the mysterious young man she has met at the skate park. But her life is in danger, and she must break free. The question is – who can she trust?

PERSIST

2015

Barrington Stoke

It’s the story of Marianne, who lies in a comma and is just starting to regain her memory at the same time that the doctors, and even her mother, are beginning to give up hope. But although Marianne has memories, she doesn’t yet realise who it is who is doing the remembering. The doctors want to turn of her life support. Will she realise in time to save her life?

HUNGER

2013

UK: Random House/Hammer

Beth should be just like any other student. Living away from home for the first time, her life should be a haze of boozy nights out and snoozing through morning lectures. Except Beth is beginning to realise that she isn’t normal. She has started to wake up each morning with dirt under her fingernails, an insatiable appetite, and the unmistakeable smell of death follows her everywhere. Either this is the mother of all hangovers, or some more sinister force is at work - and when bodies start to go missing from a nearby graveyard, Beth fears that this cannot be a coincidence. Unable to control or understand what’s happening to her, she enlists the help of her friends to work out the truth – but none of them is prepared for what they are about to discover.

HUNGER is a gripping horror story from YA author Melvin Burgess that delves into a shadowy realm of violent bodies and supernatural curses. Maybe some things are best left buried…

LOKI

2022

Coronet (UK) / Pegasus Books (US)

Starting with the Norse creation myths, the trickster god Loki takes the reader on a wild ride through Norse mythology, from the time the gods - the founders of Asgard - defeated races of monsters, and hurtling through famous stories, including Odin hanging himself on the World Tree, the theft of the corrupting gold ring and the murder of Baldr, the god of love and the Sun. This narrative may seem familiar enough at first, but the reader should beware.

Born within the heart of a fire in the hollow of a tree-trunk, Loki arrives in Asgard as an outsider. He is a trickster, an unreliable narrator, the god of intelligence and politics. In spite of his cleverness and sparkling wit (or, perhaps, because of this...) Loki struggles to find his place among the old patriarchal gods of supernatural power and is constantly at odds with the god of thunder - Thor.

Alongside the politics of Asgard, it charts the course of Loki's many loves and families, from his mothering of Odin's famous horse to his intense, turbulent, and, eventually, fatal relationship with Baldr the Beautiful - a tender and moving story of love that goes wrong, jealousy and a transitioning that is forbidden by society.

This is a retelling that is contemporary in tone, at once amusing and relatable. It is a heartfelt plea to overthrow the old gods of power and authority and instigate a new era ruled by love and intelligence.