In time for Halloween, Juno Dawson and Alex T. Smith team up for a spine-chilling YA thriller called Grave Matter. Barrington Stoke put this award winning duo together for their contemporary take on a Gothic ghost tale about love, death and black magic.
Since the car accident that resulted in the death of his girlfriend Eliza, Samuel is devastated and blames himself for the crash. He is drowning in grief and his overwhelming need to reunite with Eliza drives him to the forces of black magic, in a bid to bring her back to life. But he has difficult choices to make and the terrifying consequences of dark magic are about to raise their head…
This is Alex’s first foray into illustrating for YA fiction and he’s really enjoyed creating these appropriately dark and atmospheric images using a combination of pencil, eraser, ink and graphic powder on paper.
“Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust”
“I’m digging up my girlfriend’s dead body”
“I hope you don’t mind,” she says. “I let myself
in. The back door was unlocked.”
You can read more about Grave Matter and Alex’s approach to the illustrations for it, in an interview over on The Book Sniffer’s blog.
Photograph ©Alex T. Smith
