The Fire Within
Chris D'Lacey
 The novel is about a man named David Rain who goes to college and needs a place to stay. He finds a house on Wayward Crescent and moves in as a tenant, but little does he know that one step into the house would change his life forever. The owner of the house, Elizabeth Penykettle (also called Liz for short), gladly lets David stay with her and Lucy, her daughter. Liz earns her living by making clay dragons. The dragons are revealed to be more than meets the eye when Liz crafts David his own dragon, Gadzooks. David immediately takes a liking to his story-writing dragon, but is surprised when he begins to receive visions, almost telepathic, in his head, depicting the dragon writing words on his notebook. One day, David overhears Liz telling Lucy the story of Gawain's Fire Tear (the story of the last dragon on Earth) which gives David and the reader a greater understanding of the dragons. After hearing this story, David ties many clues together and comes up with a theory that Liz and Lucy are descendants of Guinevere, a woman in the story who comforted Gawain as he died. As time passes, David finds his relationship with his dragon slowly declining. David must give his dragon love in order to save Zookie(Gadzooks) and prevent his fire within from diminishing forever. Lucy, an eleven year-old girl, loves squirrels. For Lucy's birthday, David writes a book about the squirrels that has been named, and creates a made-up story about them. Some parts of the story that David writes have a funny coincidence with what happens in real life. Lucy brings it on David to help her catch a half-blind grey squirrel she named Conker. The two eventually catch Conker along with another squirrel named Snigger, and bring them to an animal shelter for help. Conker's eye eventually heals, but it is revealed that Conker has kidney failure and could very well die soon. David and Lucy, along with a girl from the animal shelter named Sophie, let Conker free in the library gardens. Later, Conker dies a happy death, and David finishes the story, earning him Sophie's heart.