Strong Winds series allusion to Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons series as well as other works, particularly R.L. Stevenson's "Treasure Island" and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "Song of Hiawatha". Cassandra Jardine, reviewing for "The Daily Telegraph", wrote ""The Salt-Stained Book"... is not just a homage to the Swallows and Amazons stories. Donny and Anna, Jones's fictional characters, live in the contemporary world, escaping social workers, rather than pirates. There's far more emotion than in Ransome's books" but "they share the same confident, risk-taking spirit..." Amanda Craig, reviewing "The Salt-stained Book" for "The Times" "...wasn't sure about the historical framing device that gives the novel
Suffer the Children (novel) one by one. As people scramble to find the culprit, everyone comes to a shocking realization that an evil history is repeating itself. Saul claims that the book took him 28 days to write and due to his editor's response to the title, he wrote another book before the first was published. Of the subject matter, Saul stated that "I always find ... that when you have a scary scene, it broadens the scope of possibilities if you have children involved." Suffer the Children (novel) Suffer the Children is the debut novel by author John Saul, first published by Dell