He was a strip of a lad in short pants when Hitler's bombs forced him out of the city to the remote countryside.

He was newly out of high school when he put on his khaki army uniform, picked up a rifle, and drilled to kill for his country.

He was a university student when he was lured into intelligence work where he lost his innocence in the murky depths of espionage, and his treasonous first young love to an assassin with a license to kill.

Names have been changed to protect the innocent -- and the guilty -- and to keep faith with the Official Secrets Act the author signed almost a lifetime ago.

But Heads Up for Harry is the true story of a casualty of war whose childhood and youth were sacrificed to the most evil years of the Twentieth Century ... without ever firing a shot in anger.

As always, McCracken's unique gift for story telling with humour and riveting attention to historical detail is on parade.

Two groups of teenagers – one middle-class students struggling for social justice, the other bar room toughs out for a brawl to right their own perceived wrongs – are thrust through a twist in the loop of time to the violent days of Medieval England.
Trapped in a dark era where human life is cheaper than bread and horrific torture is a popular entertainment, they find they must join forces or die.

Dogged by death every step of the way, each finds that experience of modern life has provided a skill that might – just might – save the band from an excruciating fate. And one of the group – having lost a brother to the barbaric torture death of impaling – hides a very special secret.

But as well as their own struggle for survival, the youngsters – each a convinced protestor – find themselves in a moral dilemma … how to save their own skins whilst also fighting against the inhuman brutality and injustice suffered by new friends in a time where they don't belong.

In the latest in his popular Time Shift series, Hugh McCracken transports his readers into the harsh realities of days gone by with a unique talent for interweaving breathtaking adventure and fine historical detail.

These utterly believable pages turn faster and faster to reach an unforgettable climax as McCracken casts his spell.

Read an excerpt

EPPIE 2003 Finalist in the Action/Adventure Category

The Rules of the Hunt are simple … you live or you die.

Trouble is that nobody’s told Pete and his friends that.

A group of modern-day schoolboys is thrown back through a time portal to the brutal days of Braveheart’s Scotland where they become the quarry in the Lord of the Island’s ritual hunt to the death.

This action-packed, sprint-paced thriller from master of high adventure, Hugh McCracken, and illustrated by Alan Geldard, is played out against a fascinating and perfectly researched historical backdrop that – like the time shift itself – becomes utterly and frighteningly real.

Pete and his pals hardly know who’s friend and who’s foe as they struggle their way through this strange and threatening medieval world of castles and torture chambers … literally running for their lives at every turn!

Within a few paragraphs, McCracken’s characters become so familiar that no young reader will fail to identify with one of them and share his thrills, spills and terrors.

Once again, McCracken will have his fans – and their parents – turning the pages, spellbound to the very last line.

Read an excerpt

Pete, Davey, and Mike are back in modern Scotland after a frightening but exhilarating year out of time in the twelfth century. The survival skills they fought so hard to acquire in the distant past are as inappropriate for them in the present, as hand-to-hand battle tactics are for soldiers returning to civilian life. Mike’s father, a retired special forces major, at first tries to deprogram the boys, but Pete begins to feel that his destiny is tied to the past and that he, at least, must go back.

Pete has the added complication of being the subject of a custody battle between his parents who are in the process of divorce. His father’s sister is constantly in a state of war with Pete, thinking he should still be the innocent little boy he was a year ago when the group vanished from the island and thrown back in time to the brutal days of Braveheart. .

The decision to go back or to stay seems to be Pete’s. But can he go back? Does he really have a choice? If he does go back, should he go alone or should the others go with him?

Whilst on vacation in his family's home country of Scotland, Kevin strays into a mysterious room at the back of a dusty antique shop where he discovers an ancient hand drum dating back to the days of William Wallace.
When he beats the battered old instrument, the teenager is magically transported back in time, where he finds himself marooned in an era of inhuman cruelty his school history books had never come near to describing.
With only his drum and a donkey for company, he sets out to dodge death and torture until he is made the slave of an arrogant and wicked young aristocrat – but he finds a boy he must save from murder at the hands of hired cut-throats.
In another of his thrilling Time Shift series of adventures for young adults, Hugh McCracken convincingly re-creates the brutal days when a nobleman's word was law and human life hung by a thread … to be cut on a whim.
Once again, McCracken's attention to historical detail brings to life a stirring adventure, this time excitingly illustrated by French artist, Angela Boni.

*Is the nightmare grandfather even more evil than anyone ever imagined? It's up to a secret investigation squad of schoolboy detectives to unearth the chilling truth.
*A group of newcomers to a boy's boarding school discover an unearthly new friend in their haunted dormitory. The boys need help – but so does the friendly phantom searching for the answer to a dark secret from the grave.

Hugh McCracken once again displays a matchless skill for captivating his young-adult readers in two gripping novellas which explode the myth that learning is merely a classroom experience.

The vitally real heroes in these stories share one special quality in common – a burning desire to uncover the truth … at all costs.

Our Secret Recipe
Combine the poetic works of:
* A Pennsylvania-born African-American who changed his name from Darrel to Dazz, left the army, and discovered that he had rhythm and rhyme.
* The U.S.'s “Queen of the Small Presses”: she’s been called a “modern Emily Dickinson” and her work has been praised by Robert Frost.
* A Norwegian-born poet who only started getting the attention he deserved once he started writing poems in his second language.
* A senior lecturer in Political Science at Burdwan University, West Bengal, India, who writes about his love-hate relationship with Calcutta.
* A busy mother of three from Adelaide, South Australia who found her muse at thirty-five.

Add the works of eight other talented poets — aiming for diversity in their backgrounds and writing styles — and mix in some revealing interviews.
That’s how we created Shaken & Stirred: Poetry from the Far Corners — an anthology of international poetry unlike any other.

Cheers!

Featuring: PF Allen, Donna Biffar, Heather Grace, Jan Oskar Hansen, Dazz Jackson, Athena Karnesis, Lyn Lifshin, Prasenjit Maiti, Hugh McCracken, Andrew J. Müller, Carmen Ruggero, Wynn Wheldon and David Whippman.

The body of a naked young boy hanging in a dusty barn stirs sickening feelings of déjà vu in the detective. As he unravels each knot in the tangled cord of his investigation, dedicated cop, Martin Nicols, uncovers a murderous thread ... and police prejudices which may have allowed previous killings to happen ... not to mention his own guilt! Alistair Kinnon has written much more than a tense, psychological crime novel -- his twisting plot takes the reader into the murky world of child sex-for-sale … the parent’s darkest nightmare and the child’s greatest threat.

The loose ends of murder take crusading cop Martin Nicols thousands of miles from his home beat … and into a steaming hotbed of child vice, inhuman torture and death.

But this time Nicols struggles against more than evil puppetmasters with ultimate power over their helpless young victims … he must also contend with hostile and jealous colleagues and infuriating red tape that threatens to hog tie his investigation and let the guilty get away with murder.

Unlike lesser crime writers, Kinnon does not insult us by scattering red herrings as he tears through his story. Every lead matters. All the intelligent reader must do is to decide how much.

Just like in a real murder hunt, the solid evidence unfolding page by page points in more directions than a weather vane in a gale. It isn't wise to attempt to outguess Kinnon - but it's fruitless to try to resist the temptation as you're drawn into his book as a silent character.