John Tarrow

THE BOOK Abandoned and alone, thirteen-year-old Joe's world is shattered when he enters a deserted council house and becomes trapped within a labyrinth protecting the last magical places on earth. There, Joe discovers The Stranger's Guide, a cryptic book charting this immense no-man's land and his only map through its dark and dangerous puzzle of doors and rooms. Hunted by sinister forces, Joe is forced ever deeper into both the maze and the mystery of his missing parents. What lies at the labyrinth's centre and will it reunite him with the family he so desperately needs? THE HOUSE The novel is inspired by and set inside a unique and amazing house and gardens. Talliston was a 25-year project that took the UK's most ordinary house and transformed it, room by room, by ordinary people on an ordinary budget, into Britain's Most Extraordinary Home. Starting as a three-bedroomed, semi-detached, ex-council house in Essex, today not a single square centimetre of the original house remains. In its place is an extraordinary labyrinth of locations, each set in different times and places. Talliston is a once ordinary house and gardens in Essex where its thirteen rooms have been transformed into extraordinary locations each set in a different time and place. Magnolia living rooms have been recreated as Welsh watchtowers. Garages as log cabins in the woods. Box-rooms as 1920s investigator offices. A former pink bedroom is now a dark and haunted Scottish chamber. Talliston (a name that means 'the hidden place in the wood') in the medieval market town of Great Dunmow, just minutes from Stansted airport, is another world hiding on a perfectly normal street, inviting you to step inside and discover its secrets.