In their new home in the country, Graham and his small sister, Matty, sense terrifying secrets are hidden there. Graham's father works on a state-of-the-art computer-guided weapons system for the future - shortly to be shown to the big players in the international weapons market. Troubled by the shifting presences and his small sister's conversations with an unseen young man she calls Paul, Graham looks for the key to the past. What he uncovers shakes the foundations of his existence: a secret First World War research establishment using British military prisoners as guinea-pigs, and a young man executed for speaking out.

Past and future come together when his father is arrested for treason: the codes for the new weapons' operating system have been published on the Internet. By his father? Or, as Graham believes, the final act of the ghost of 'a young man who felt he'd failed in his own life and has seen the demons driven away in ours ...'

There are 208 pages in this book. This book was published 2000 by Hachette Children's Group .

While Nick Manns was growing up, his father was in the RAF. Every two years his family would pack up and move to another RAF base - but one of the things that stayed firm during his childhood were the stories he could fetch from the local library. Even in some remote desert outpost, there was alway a book to transport him to other worlds. He has written stories and poems every since. Formerly a secondary school English teacher, he is now a curriculum coordinator for Leicester College. A published writer of books about teaching, Control-Shift was his debut novel, shortlisted for the North-East Book Award and the Branford Boase Award, longlisted for the Camegie Medal, and nominated for the Stockton Award.