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

The Geek was staring at her - again! Samantha could feel his eyes boring into the back of her neck. That's all he ever did - just stare. All the time. Whenever she was in Mrs Winton's class she knew that if she turned round in her seat she would catch his eye. He'd been doing it ever since this term started which, as it happened, was when he had joined the class. Why her? She couldn't decide when she looked at him whether his expression was one of hate or desire. It was intense, she could certainly say that. 


She couldn't believe it was because he fancied her. There were two things about her which were guaranteed to make any boy run a mile; she was clever and she was fat. Boys didn't like clever girls. They were afraid of being shown up. And nobody liked fat girls. She had no girlfriends either. Who wanted to be friends with someone who was top of the class (very uncool) and complete rubbish at sport (mega-uncool)?


Chapter 29