The Accidental Pirates: Voyage to Magical North by Claire Fayers is a heart-warming pirate adventure fuelled by friendship, magic and sea shanties.

Twelve-year-old Brine Seaborne is a girl with a past, if only she could remember what it is. Found alone in a rowboat as a child, clutching a shard of the rare starshell, a powerful source that is needed for spell-casting, she’s spent every day since housekeeping for an irritable magician and his obnoxious apprentice, Peter.

But everything changes when Brine and Peter accidentally break the magician’s starshell and are forced to flee the island. Lost at sea, they blunder into the path of the legendary pirate ship The Onion. Before you can say ‘pieces of eight,’ they’re up to their necks in the pirates’ quest to find Magical North, a place so shrouded in secrets and myth that most people don’t even think it exists, but is full of hidden treasure and starshell.

If Brine is lucky, she may find out who her parents are and why they sent her out to sea. And if she’s unlucky, everyone on the ship will be eaten by sea monsters. Or worse, penguins…

Full of monsters, pirates, magic and life-changing adventures, Voyage to Magical North is the first in the exciting new series, The Accidental Pirates, by debut author Claire Fayers.

Claire Fayers was born and brought up in South Wales, an area of the country sadly deficient in dragons. Having studied English at Canterbury University, she built a successful career writing short stories for women’s magazines until the lure of magic became too much and she wrote The Voyage to the Magical North. When she’s not writing, you’ll find her at her allotment. She has produced some magnificent onions, but her dream of growing a straight carrot still eludes her.

Claire Fayers will be taking part in public signings on Saturday, August 6, at Waterstones, Carmarthen.