Michaela Morgan is a long-established children's author with a string of bestselling titles to her name, including the Rockets quartet, Silly Sausage. She has been shortlisted for the Children's Book of the Year, been an International Reading Association Children's Choice and won a United Kingdom Reading Association award.

The Thing in the Basement is an atmospheric mystery story with a school setting. When the boy arrives at his new school everything is strange and different. The big, Victorian building has many storeys and a basement...As he passes the basement he notices a smell of heat and soot and burning. He looks down there and suddenly there's bang and a flash, a roaring sound. He knows there's something down there. Something nasty...something monstrous. And as the day goes on, all the evidence leads to suggest that the 'something' is a dragon...