A GLOBAL cyber attack is the setting for Wilsden author William Coniston’s latest children’s adventure.

M..I.C.E and the Dragon Worm is a sequel to his previous novel, M..I.C.E. and the Stone, published last year. This new adventure is aimed at youngsters aged eight upwards and takes place in Bradford and the Yorkshire coast.

“Yorkshire Noir for children,” is how William describes his new novel. “M.I.C.E (Mammals In Co-operation Everywhere), is a secret international organisation set up by animals and birds many centuries ago to protect themselves from slaughter and violence caused by humans in wars and other harmful activities,” he explains. “Olly and Tilly Peterson from Wilsden are honorary members and a mysterious black stone passed down in their family enables them to understand and speak to animals and birds.

“As the summer holidays begin, a destructive cyber attack - the Dragon Worm - spreads rapidly across the country and around the world, bringing civilisation to a standstill. Governments are baffled but M.I.C.E is on the case and asks Olly and Tilly for help. Soon they, two friends and a crack team of birds and animals - including technologically gifted mice, a feisty budgie and a water vole with a home-made plane - are in a race against time, facing a ruthless enemy and deadly dangers that test them to the limit.”

Readers of M.I.C.E. and the Stone will know that Olly and Tilly first discovered their special abilities with the black stone while battling evil foes from the past. Now those abilities are needed more than ever. This time it’s nothing to do with the past - or is it?

“I’ve lived in Bradford all my life so both novels start here, then the action moves to Scar Bay, a fictitious seaside village near Whitby, which is Robin Hoods Bay, thinly disguised. It’s a place I know well and where I often go to write,” says William.

Sales of his previous novel have been mainly in the UK and America, and the author was contacted from an English teacher at a school near Atlanta, Georgia, who was reading it with her Fifth grade class.

William has been writing all his life, but mainly boring legal documents. Now he’s put all that behind him and finds writing novels much more fun.

* M..I.C.E and the Dragon Worm is available from Amazon and Salts Mill Bookshop, Saltaire, The Whitby Bookshop and Book Corner, Saltburn-by-the-Sea. For more about William Coniston’s novels go to his Facebook page, tinyurl.com/WmConistonFB and on Twitter.