Jenny Twist was born in York and brought up in the West Yorkshire mill town of Heckmondwike, the eldest grandchild of a huge extended family.
She left school at fifteen and went to work in an asbestos factory. After working in various jobs, including bacon-packer and escapologist’s assistant (she was The Lovely Tanya), she returned to full-time education and did a BA in history, at Manchester and post-graduate studies at Oxford.
She stayed in Oxford working as a recruitment consultant for many years and it was there that she met and married her husband, Vic.
In 2001 they retired and moved to Southern Spain where they live with their rather eccentric dogs and cat. Besides writing, she enjoys reading, knitting and attempting to do fiendishly difficult logic puzzles.
In July 2018 she won the Author Show TOP FEMALE AUTHOR Fantasy/Horror/Paranormal/Science Fiction award.

. . .In the south of Spain at the beginning of the twentieth century, village people still believed in this particular fabulous beast. Sometimes they called it a mantequero, and sometimes a sacamantecas; it was a monster which looked like a man, but which lived in wild places and fed on human manteca or fat . . .
Some people still do . . .

This book is a compilation of the three Mantequero stories: Mantequero, Disappeared and Sins of the Father; with the addition of two new stories: The First Mantequero and The Last Mantequero.


Tales of the Mantequero

Heather, who had been listening in fascination, cracked out laughing. "It's a bogeyman. Bloody hell, I wouldn't have thought anyone would have believed anything like that in this day and age."


"But something must have happened,"Alison insisted. "Something must have happened to make them think it was the Mantequero. And it must have had something to do with Miss Blacker."


She fell silent, thinking of the house at the top of the hill, decorated with flowers, like the scene of a murder or a fatal accident. And that huge red cross painted on the door, marking it as a plague house. 


"Oh Heather, I'm really afraid someone may have killed her and they thought it was the Mantequero."


"Rubbish,"Heather said cheerfully. "She probably got some bug that made her lose a lot of weight and they thought it was this bogeyman chap who sucks your fat off, and they sealed up the house to stop him getting back in. Christ, she might still be in there. Still recovering,"


Chapter 24