The end of the world is coming.
But first, you have Friday period six.

In September 2005, the world didn’t know about heroes or demons, or whether knights – new or old – still existed. Neither did six friends just trying to survive High School in Calendar, a rain‑soaked Lancashire town tucked between hills and secrets.

But what you don’t know can kill you.

Ricky Kent and Mark Matthews, two boys bound by destiny, hunt monsters in the shadows while struggling to keep up with homework, exhaustion, and the weight of a calling no teenager should bear. When a vampyric cult arrives in Calendar, the secrets they’ve fought to protect begin to pull their friends – Sara Carpenter and Amy Donaldson – into the darkness with them. Both girls soon learn that the cost of heroism may be their innocence.

Ancient evil stirs.
A watcher waits in the wings.
And forces, dark and light, have taken notice.

New in Town brings together the first five episodes of ’til the End of the World in a polished, expanded collection packed with bonus features. Darkly funny, heartfelt, and steeped in YA supernatural chaos, this is where the saga begins – where these friends learn that sometimes being a teenager really is the end of the world.

What’s Inside This Volume

Episode I – Stand By Me – Part 1
Episode II – Stand By Me – Part 2
Episode III – Fallout
Episode IV – All the Good Girls
Episode V – New in Town

What You’ll Find in This Book (Bonus Content)

• Brand new in-universe interludes and asides, adding depth and connection to other Rick Rawes novels
• Bonus scenes, revised content and polished prose
• Behind-the-Scenes peek at the inspiration behind each episode
• Soundtrack discussion, linked to your emotional journey
• Lore snippets, deepening your understanding of the monsters and mayhem
• Exclusive sneak-peek at Volume II episodes

Short Excerpt

Click Here for a Snippet

              Finally, the creature that had lived for three hundred years did something it never thought it would again. It ran. The smartest thing it could have done.

              Smartest…yet still too late.

              His left arm dangling limply at his side, the boy grabbed the nearest bin lid and, with an insane level of strength, flung it as though a giant discus. It crunched into the fleeing creature’s back with a satisfying snap of bone as the beast fell to the floor, groaning and moaning like so many helpless victims before it. Breath, though not necessary in the same quantities as humans, struggled to move down into its bruised lungs. It wouldn’t matter. Not anymore.

              With deliberate slowness, the hunter child stalked. This was not the action of some heroic slayer; it was psychological torture carried out by the devils of the world. It knew its time was up. And the boy knew it knew. Death came to the deathless, as the boy reached down and felt the skull of the creature between his hands – and twisted.

              The hunter child stepped back; the creature’s consciousness was gone. It would be a small mercy, as the body erupted into a pillar of flame, rising three feet above it. It engulfed everything, leaving only ash behind—the remains of a now-dead vampyr.

              Adrenaline flooding through him, Ricky Kent, the boy hunter, removed the knife from his shoulder and let it clatter to the ground as he clenched his teeth against the pain. It was these dreams of blood and violence that haunted him most at night, which meant he seldom slept.

              But it was his duty. Or something like it.

              He turned and melted into the rain and darkness, the night’s hunt now done.

Behind the Story

Growing up feels like the end of the world. It’s a fact we forget the further we get from the experience. When we think adulthood brings with it adult truths. The central idea for this story was: what if it were? What if the end of the world came not with a bang, but with a slow, gradual transition from the innocence of being young to the adult world of monsters and mayhem? That was the idea behind ’til the End of the World, which, over the years, has grown into an epic saga beyond telling.

It’s safe to say that my personal journey began with this story – when I was actually fifteen like Ricky, Sara and the team. It was moulded by the world I lived in, the early 2000s, with a very specific cultural vibe and feel. This is what I’ve captured here, that slice of melancholy that came with teen angst amidst a world changing around us. A sense there were so many things happening we couldn’t understand – but tried to anyway. And while we were just trying to keep our heads down and survive GCSEs, the world was preparing to be something else.

This is YA for people who grew up with YA, and who want to look back at the journeys that shaped us – for better or worse.