It is July 1929. Four children arrive for a holiday to find their cottage locked up, the lake flooded, and their little boat inaccessible. Their boating holiday seems over before it had begun. Initially, this might be the story Arthur Ransome never got round to writing. But these children do not lead a charmed life. They are given to making mistakes and things do not invariably turn out well. Problems that appear solved turn out to be the seeds of something altogether out of control. In a terrifying climax, the children discover the secret of the old boat moored in the bay, but at an awful cost. When courage and resourcefulness are spent there is only luck to draw on, and it is uncertain who will survive. The Boat in the Bay is a book about a time when children roamed the earth. In the same series, The Broken Bell and The Pink House, with the same cast of characters, offer a spellbinding account of a child’s first steps in the dark world of art and artists.