Alex vs Axel

Alex is a normal, everyday kid, living in a normal, everyday city. Axel is a monster-slaying hero, living in a world of magic. But when the two boys mysteriously swap places, each of them ends up being mistaken for the other.

With zero experience of heroism, Alex is thrust into an epic quest to defeat the evil Felonius Gloam, who has stolen the Book of Lifetales and is using it to unravel the very fabric of the world of Aë rth. Meanwhile, Axel is faced with double maths, a gran who's six months behind on the rent, and a crucial chess tournament he's got to win – when he doesn't even know how to play.

Can the two boys complete their Impossible Quests and find a way back to their own lives, or will they both discover they don't have a life to come back to . . . ?

Sam Copeland is an author, which has come as something of a surprise to him. He is from Manchester and now lives in London with two smelly cats, three smelly children and one relatively clean-smelling wife.

He is the author of the bestselling Charlie Changes Into a Chicken series (the first book of which was shortlisted for the Waterstones Children's Book Prize), Uma and the Answer to Absolutely Everything and Greta and the Ghost Hunters. With Jenny Pearson, he has also written Tuchus & Topps Investigate: The Underpants of Chaos and Tuchus & Topps Investigate: The Attack of the Robot Librarians.

Despite legal threats, he refuses to stop writing.