Hodder Literature: a new and exciting series of literature titles for Key Stage 3 for whole class use.

Joe Maloney isn't your average truant. It's not the bullies' taunts that keep him away from school -- he gets enough of that just walking out of his front door; and it's certainly not in rebellion against his mum -- he could never do that.

He just can't imagine being caged inside the school gates, away from the fantastic creatures that only he sees all around, and so his days are spent wandering the wilderness around Helmouth with his mate, Stanny Mole.

But Stanny has got in with Joff, a menacing figure who is obsessed with a violent kind of survival, with hunting and mastering nature.

Escape for Joe comes in the form of the rundown Hackenschmidt's Circus and the strangely familiar Corinna.

It is in the circus, a place of contained wildness where the barriers between the human and animal world are fluid, that Joe learns the meaning of his night-time visits from the tiger -- so real that his skin and its pelt begin to feel as one...