FROM love and hate to war and peace right down to cheese - a new book by a Worcester author certainly covers it all.

Awe of Mercury , a semi-science fiction, action and adventure story for teenagers, is the latest novel by Elon Dann.

The 46-year-old software engineer of Clarkson Garden's in Warndon Villages, Worcester, who is also well known for litter picking in the area for the Duckworth Worcestershire Trust, was delighted to have his second book published in July by Hotkey books of London.

It is a sequel to Clockwise to Titan, which was published in April last year.

The new book tells the story of a group of teenagers living in a land torn apart by a brutal civil war and trying desperately to discover the whereabouts of their friend.

Mr Dann said: "The action begins on the death spiral, an underground, circular death row where the condemned wait out their final days, and concludes with a showdown inside a particle accelerator much like the Large Hadron Collider.

"The book covers big themes such as love and hate, war and peace, birth and death - and cheese. As the characters in the book discover, cheese plays a surprisingly fundamental role in the structure of the universe and events in human lives.

"The book is full of puns and word play and contains some genuinely shocking scenes that I hope will leave readers stunned."

When writing his novels Mr Dann uses his litter picking as inspiration.

"One of the themes of both my books is the use of unusual and discarded items to escape from captivity, definitely a case of litter inspiring literature. I often visit local secondary schools and give talks showing how rubbish can be made into survival and escape tools."

And while the book is primarily aimed at teenagers Mr Dann hopes it offers something for the older reader as well.

"The intended readership is 13 to 18 year olds, although many adults have read and enjoyed it too," he added. "My editor always says that I write books for adults disguised as books for teenagers."

Mr Dann is due to appear at Waterstones in Worcester on Saturday, October 11, as part of the national Books are my bag campaign to promote bookstores, where he will be signing books and demonstrating useful things made out of rubbish.