A calm bedtime story for when you cannot turn your brain off at night, about a debt being settled at low tide. Captain Coral surfaces with an old shell, from further down than he usually goes, that holds the sound of this coast as it was before the lighthouse had its current lamp. Prince Freddie holds it to his ear for five seconds and hears a wave approach, break, and draw back through the wet sand. Then he sets it on the ledge above his bed and listens to the same sea doing the same thing outside. A story about how long the ordinary has been going on without you.

Prince Freddie is a small dog in a flat gold crown who lives in a sleepy village on the Spanish coast, where the days are warm, the sea is always close, and nothing is ever in a hurry. These are unhurried sleep stories for grown-ups, written to quiet a busy mind and soften the en ...