'Stubbs, his hair is wiry Stubbs, his breath is fiery Stubbs can't read my diary He's smelly and he's dim Stubbs licks all our dishes Stubbs destroys my wishes And we can't go to Mauritius Just because of him' So wrote Violet Peck in her diary at the beginning of the summer holiday. But thanks to Stubbs, the Peck's spoilt rotten dog, Violet does go away for the summer... to a much stranger and scarier place than she could ever dream of. And she gets much closer to the family pet than any little girl could wish. With the headstrong Stubbs on one side and Harry and Hannah, her conniving cousins on the other, Violet is plunged into a world of shop-lifting, weird science, deadly secrets and belly button rings. And she ventures to a terrifying place that no one has ever been before... so close to home, yet so very far away.