stuart oldfield

With his life in complete meltdown in this world, Simon Cadwallader finds himself unexpectedly transported into an alternative reality. Hallucinogenic dream or a parallel universe? Either way, he arrives completely disorientated and with no memory of his previous life – not even his own name.

As he gradually gets his bearings, it becomes apparent that our amnesiac hero is an unwitting participant in a game about which he knows nothing. Indeed, as the story unfolds, the absolutely pivotal nature of his role in this game becomes disturbingly clear, as does the multitude of attendant dangers.

There are of course other players in the great game, such as Miss Leggett, the Under Manager for the Company, and Norbert Dentressangle, the handsome and charming Frenchman who claims to be his dearest and most faithful friend. And then there is plethora of strange beings – including a clothes peg and a giant flatworm – who seem to be servants of the government and who are distinguished by their incessant exhorting of him to search for an enigmatic female Janus, The Woman Who Looks Both Ways. It is soon clear to him that he is central to all of their schemes, but what are they hoping to gain from him? And above all which of them have his interests at heart and which do not?

But it is the final player in the game that is the most worrying of all. In particular, what is the nature of his own relationship to this baleful creature – 'two sides of the same coin', he is told, 'two halves of the same whole' – and can something so like him really be the monster of evil that it appears to be?

The four books of White Rabbit follow our hero as he pursues his quest to find the way home through this grotesque and contrary world, encountering bizarre people and creatures, both friendly and hostile – and it's usually difficult to tell which is which – who either guide him on his way or try to block his every step... and worse.

The White Rabbit series
Book 1: The One Who Is Two
Book 2: Friends and Enemies
Book 3: Red Tape
Book 4: The Woman Who Looks Both Ways