Deck Boy is a full-blooded and comical adventure story for readers of all ages. It is set in the mid 1970s, the last great days of the British merchant fleet when ships were beautiful, the dock basins were crowded, navigation was by the stars, and the thronging crews were very different from the crowd you met in the high street.When Ben Thomson, nearly fifteen, plays truant from his expensive boarding school, he has no idea that he will never return. All he intends is to visit his old home in Westport, but a chance encounter in a steamy workmen's café on the Dock Road turns his life on its head. Before he knows it, Ben finds himself escaping through a window, assaulted in an illegal drinking den, threatened by a murderer, changing his name and his appearance, forging documents, getting tattooed, making a host of new friends – and enemies – and outward bound on a voyage to the far side of the world. Surrounded by a crew of loyal, eccentric, gay and violent shipmates, Ben...

Fourteen year-old Sutherlander Murdo Mackay agrees to collect some machinery by boat in early 1943, but his suspicions about the mysterious cargo are confirmed when he discovers that the crates are full of German machine guns. Fleeing through freezing conditions and some of Scotland's harshest landscapes as the extent of the German plan becomes clear, Murdo must run not only for his life, but to save Britain from invasion.

Far away from everything in the Scottish Highlands, Peter Irwin is far from your normal teenager. Thriving in his remote surroundings Peter finds himself facing some tough problems as his father battles Gulf War Syndrome, he struggles with his irresponsible mother and fights with his pregnant teenage sister who is following in her mother's flamboyant footsteps. He never complains but is silently tormented by his mother's abandonment, the traumatic death of his father and his sister's disappearance. All alone he is left to manage the house, the farm and look after his new born niece. Soon, when circumstances threaten to uncover the secret that he never wants anyone to know, Peter reaches breaking point. Take a walk in Peter Irwin's shoes and experience the struggle of growing up and the hope he discovers at the bottom of the hill.