Dianne Hofmeyr lives in London but grew up on the southern tip of Africa. She qualified as an art teacher. Journeys with notebook and camera through Botswana, China, Egypt, Russia, Tunisia, Senegal, Siberia, Vietnam and Zambia have led to books that have won Sanlam Awards, the Young Africa Award, IBBY Honour Books and the M-Net Book Prize. Her novels and picture books have been translated into Catalan, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish as well as most African languages. In 2012 she celebrated twenty five years of being published in South Africa by Tafelberg.

A modern day pirate story . . . Oliver Strange is helping his father collect frog data in Madagascar when he and his friend, Zinzi, come across a strange laboratory and a girl held captive. Then his father disappears. While searching for clues, Oliver and Zinzi discover more than frogs, lemurs and giant boas lurking in the trees. The forests are filled with ghosts of the past, when pirates plundered the coast. They uncover a dark secret that could rip the heart out of the forest. Not just Oliver's father, but all of them are in grave danger. Will they escape? Or will they too become ghosts of Madagascar?