The Books · School Library

Mr. Gorzug – Substitute Teacher

He came through a portal to conquer a world. He stayed to mark its homework.

At 7:43 on an ordinary morning, a portal opens above the car park of Halcyon Comprehensive and deposits Gorzug, son of Makar, Breaker of Ash Fort and Shield of the Red Vale, into the middle of a struggling British state school. He was expecting a battlefield. He gets a timetable, a fluorescent duty vest, and Year 8C.

With no way home, Gorzug does what any honourable warrior would do: he stays, and he teaches. He can't make sense of email, but he can read a frightened child from across a crowded room in seconds. Slowly, a school that had stopped expecting much begins to change around him.

Then his own world comes looking, and Gorzug must decide what, and who, he is willing to defend.

“These are mine.”

• “The story is clever, funny, and heartwarming … a feel good story that had me smiling all the way through.”Amazon review
• “This disarmingly charming tale took me by surprise. Modern life is full of circumstances that tear you down. This is a lovely antidote.”Amazon review

Mr. Gorzug and the Required Qualifications

He has survived a siege. Now he faces something far worse: HR has noticed.

Gorzug has held a fortress against the forces of his own world. Unfortunately, none of that is on the approved evidence portal. When the trust's HR department notices that the school's best teacher has no recognised credentialing pathway, Gorzug is enrolled, against the wishes of nearly everyone with sense, on an accelerated route to becoming the thing he already is.

Cue self-assessment frameworks, reflective journals, file-naming conventions, and an observation cycle conducted with the gravity of siege warfare. The enemy this time is not the Thorn Court but the photocopier, the progress bar, and a threat delivered entirely in knitwear.

As staff and pupils rally to prove the obvious, Gorzug learns that qualification was never really about competence. It was about settling, at last, into a place that wants to keep you.

• “WoW meets To Sir, with Love.”Reader review
• “Hilarious in the so very English way! … should be required reading for all teachers in training.”Amazon review

Mr. Gorzug and the English Summer

A cancelled conference, a broken-down train, and an accidental road trip across England.

School's out. Gorzug and Miss Khan are dispatched to a dreary professional-development conference. Then the trains fail, the plans collapse, and the pair find themselves loose in the English summer instead. Seaside chips and warring seagulls. A village football derby. A B&B landlady with opinions. An aunt who has already decided exactly what Gorzug is to the family, thank you.

Gorzug fills his notebook with bewildered, tender field reports on English life. When the notebook quietly goes viral, his attempts to understand humanity become unexpectedly public, and something long unspoken between him and Saira Khan edges past deniability.

“England has done rather well with you too.”

• “This series has been amusing on every page, occasionally hysterical and always accurate.”Amazon review
• “Brilliant in a most English way. I will mourn the loss when I have completed the series.”Amazon review

Mr. Gorzug and the Matter of Home

Three claims on his future. He can only choose one home.

Gorzug has never been more settled. Which is, naturally, when everything comes to claim him at once. The academy trust wants to promote him out of the classroom and into a roving “model of best practice.” The old world wants him back: Tazgul of the House of Serat arrives through a reopened seam to call him home by blood and rank. And Saira Khan wants something he cannot even perceive, because his world-view has no category for it.

Three claims, one autumn term, and a choice that no siege or speech can win for him.

“I choose it because it is home.”

• “Funny, touching at times, and wonderfully insightful … about what students need in order to learn in safety despite the craziness of educational bureaucracy.”Amazon review

Mr. Gorzug and the Matter of Family

No battlefield is as perilous as a kitchen full of relatives forming opinions.

Mr. Gorzug has survived portals, paperwork, professional development, and the English summer. Now he faces something worse. His mother is coming to school.

By ordinary standards, Halcyon Comprehensive is not prepared for Kezra of House Makar. It has a visitor book, a safeguarding policy, several laminated notices, and Mrs. Doyle on Reception, which is more defence than many fortresses enjoy. Unfortunately, Kezra has not crossed worlds to admire the signage. She has come to inspect her son's life.

What makes a family? And who gets to decide?