Archer's Goon
World Fantasy Award nominee 1985.
The trouble started when Howard Sykes came home from school and found the Goon sitting in the kitchen and preventing Fifi from making the tea. He'd come to collect for Archer, he said - Howard's father had got behind with his payments and he'd better deliver fast. Archer wanted his two thousand now. ' "Two thousand!" Fifi exclaimed. "You never told me that!" "Who is Archer?" said Howard.' As Howard desperately attempts to unravel the mystery, he discovers a ruthless plot to take over the world. Events move to a truly stupendous conclusion for all concerned, in this magnificently inventive and hilarious novel by a prize-winning author.
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Diana Wynne Jones
Long before fantasy became mainstream, Diana Wynne Jones was quietly rewriting its rules—building magical worlds that felt both whimsical and wise, mischievous and deeply human. Her stories didn’t just sparkle with enchantment; they carried a quiet intelligence that dared young readers to think deeper, look sideways, and always expect the unexpected.
Born in London in 1934, Jones grew up amid wartime evacuations and an often-chaotic household—experiences that would later inform the strange, shifting families and fractured realities in her fiction. She studied English at Oxford under tutors like C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, though she later remarked she learned more by not imitating them. Instead, she carved out her own voice: lyrical but grounded, funny but never flippant, magical yet steeped in emotional truth.
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