Everyday life can turn extraordinary in an instant.
For Ewen “Useless” Euston, a swirling mandala on the oval, a mysterious carnival, or even a second-hand computer game can open gateways to worlds where children vanish, villages crumble, and alien threats rise.
Alongside loyal friends and faithful dogs, Useless must outwit kidnappers, overlords, clones, and even giant ants if he wants to bring everyone home.
Packed with humour, heart, and nail-biting twists, A Useless Series delivers fast-paced sci-fi adventures where ordinary kids take on impossible odds–and sometimes, saving the world is the only way to prove you’re not useless after all.
Book 1: Useless and the Mandala Trap
Ewen “Useless” Euston has the worst nickname in his neighbourhood. When a sprained ankle keeps him home from a mysterious rally at the park, he watches helplessly as every child in the district, including his twin sisters, vanishes into thin air.
No one else seems to notice. Parents have forgotten their own children exist.
Following an old Labrador through a swirling pattern on the oval, Ewen stumbles into another world entirely. The missing children are here, drugged to forget their real lives, forced to work as labourers for strangers who want to keep them forever.
The gateway home won’t stay open long. Armed with nothing but his wits and a few unlikely allies, Ewen must find a way to free the children before the gate seals shut, and he loses everyone he loves.
For readers 10+ who love brave underdogs and parallel-world escapades.
Genre: Middle-Grade Portal Fantasy with Sci-Fi Elements
ISBN ebook: 978-1-925574-95-1
ISBN PRINT D2D: 9798232179823
ASIN: B0FR2ZQDYN
Word Count: 126, 758
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Book 2: Useless and the Carnival of Terror
The carnival gates swing open, but no one leaves.
When Ewen “Useless” Euston and his best friend Perry sneak into the grand opening of The New Carnival, they expect a few free rides and maybe some trouble for sneaking in. What they don’t expect is to find every adult slumped unconscious and every child vanishing into thin air.
Then their friend Will wins a strange token in a rigged arcade game. One canoe ride later, the boys are transported to an alien planet where the sun never sets, and nothing is what it seems.
Drugged food. Grinning surveillance heads. Monstrous hounds. And a gang of red-crested criminals who see children as cargo.
Useless and his friends must outwit intergalactic kidnappers, befriend terrifying alien creatures, and find a way home before time runs out, or they’ll be lost forever.
Packed with fast-paced action, dry humour, and nail-biting escapes, Useless and the Carnival of Terror is the second adventure in A Useless Series, perfect for readers 10+ who love brave underdogs, bizarre mysteries, and impossible odds.
Genre: Middle-Grade Sci-Fi Adventure with Dark Fantasy Tone
ISBN ebook: 978-1-925574-96-8
ISBN PRINT D2D: 9798231409044
ASIN: B0FRXHCNFX
Word Count: 24,081
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Book 3: Useless and the School Fete
Ewen “Useless” Euston is just trying to find his twin sisters at the school fete when he steps on a live wire behind the old fairy tree and vanishes into another world. The world looks like a fairy tale, but it runs on science. The elves in silver suits riding hover mats are intergalactic criminals who have been using the portal to abduct children. They have a quota to fill and a market off-planet, and sixteen kids are already trapped. The portal decays at sunset. Every child still in this world when it closes stays forever.
Ewen, class brain Will and resourceful Perry have one afternoon to remove implanted tracking devices, disable a force field, and get sixteen kids home. Their allies include a deposed dragon king merged with a lizard and a pterodactyl, a wizard, and his Halfling helper Tellick. Their enemy has hover mats, disintegrator weapons, and a very short patience for children who won’t cooperate.
The kid they all call Useless is going to need everything that name never gave him.
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Coming Soon:
Book 4: Useless and the Seventh Choice
Ewan ‘Useless’ Euston thought his Saturday couldn’t get any more boring. Then his mate Perry turned up with a mysterious game disc his dog dug up from the tip.
One click, and everything changed.
Now Ewan, Perry, brainy Will and their yipping puppy Leo are stranded in a world that shouldn’t exist, a world they’ve somehow visited before. Giant mutant ants are devouring everything in sight. A village of men has no daughters to continue their families. And tall, powerful strangers have arrived in a rocket with plans of their own.
The boys must forge an unlikely alliance between suspicious villagers and formidable newcomers. But when soldier ants drag them deep underground, survival becomes the only game that matters.
Time runs differently here. The door home appears only at dawn, and it won’t stay open forever.
An action-packed middle grade adventure about friendship, courage and discovering that even ‘useless’ kids can save the day.
Book 5: Useless and the Weird Sect of the Blue Triangle
Ewan Euston has a reputation for being useless. But when his science teacher Mr. Harran breaks a classmate’s ankle during football practice, Ewan becomes suspicious.
What is Mr. Harran’s connection to the Blue Triangle League? Why do people enter their mysterious local hall and emerge… different? And what really happens behind their locked doors on Saturday nights?
When Ewan and his friends Perry, Derran, and Will follow a group of people through the Blue Triangle’s gate at midnight, they stumble into a nightmare. A parallel world where the sun scorches, mutated creatures hunt, and workers are enslaved through mind-control technology locked around their necks.
Now trapped in a world of giant ants with paralytic venom, carnivorous rabbits, and creatures far worse, the boys must rely on their wits, their friendship, and each other to survive. But escaping might be the least of their problems, because the forces that rule this world have noticed them.
A middle-grade adventure filled with mystery, danger, and the kind of courage that proves “useless” is just a label waiting to be proved wrong.
