The Einstein Object

"... an edge-of-your seat storyline rendered in convincing prose." - Publishers Weekly (BookLife Prize 2023) All Preston wants for his 12th birthday is a phone.
Instead he gets a coding language secretly created by Albert Einstein, the power to change reality, and a magical enemy inherited from his long dead grandfather. So not the birthday he'd been hoping for.
It all starts when a mysterious course in computer programming injures Preston's fingers. Because of that, he misses months of school. And when he returns he finds the world strangely altered. His old friends avoid him and strange kids from the programming club are fascinated by him. And, yes, he does have surprising new math skills, but he's also having nightmares that don't add up: dark matter missing from the universe, and his neighborhood overrun by Dark Folk.
Then his programming friends enter a competition to create a game, and Preston has to use his grandfather's terrible gift-the coding language that snarls his fingers in knots - to defend them. As the competition clock ticks down, the questions multiply. What is this legacy Preston inherited? Why does the Dark Crone want his mobile phone? And, most important of all, who, or what, is The Einstein Object?
The Einstein Object is MG science fantasy set in a world like ours, where people who learn a secret programming language can make real magic, although it's virtually impossible to learn that language and if you do learn it you'll wish you hadn't. Which is exactly what happens to Preston...