8–10

Mia lives in Nubis, a city plunged into a forever night by the menacing Reaper King. After a scary encounter with a wild umbra, a shadow creature, in the Nightmare Plains, Mia decides she no longer wants to follow her dream of being an umbra tamer.

Introducing Alice Éclair, aged thirteen, the newest spy extraordinaire. By day, she is a talented and creative pastry chef in her mother’s renowned Parisian patisserie constructing delicious and intricate confections. At night, she transforms into a cunning and quick-witted spy, ready to undertake even the most difficult assignment. Inveigling her way onto the glamorous Sapphire Express train, Alice’s task is to single out who amongst the eclectic group of passengers is the double agent before the train reaches its destination.

Inspired by author and illustrator Tim Tilly’s childhood, spent roaming in what he refers to as a “ghost forest” in Braunstone, Witchstorm follows Will, a Fenland boy. After his mother disappears while on the hunt for a lost witch treasure, the appearance of another witch who arrives in the eye of a storm turns Will’s world upside down.

Erskin has always felt different from the other villagers in her coastal village of Lofotby. She and her family are regarded with suspicion, living as they do so close to the sinister magical Mountainfell that looms over their home. When strange tremors wake the terrifying cloud dragon, who then snatches Erskin’s sister, Birgit, Erskin’s world shatters. She has no choice but to trek to the cloud dragon’s home in the peaks of Mountainfell to rescue Birgit. But Mountainfell’s magic is wild and dangerous. How can little Erskin possibly survive?

The little town of Cowslip Grove seems to be safe and orderly, full of neat gardens and tidy streets. That is, until two mismatched friends, Levi and Kat, discover a dark and terrifying secret beneath the surface: children are going missing, and nobody even realises it. Everyone—their family, their teachers, their friends—has forgotten they even existed!

Callie, Billy and Ted are the three protagonists of the narrative and each have their own worries to contend with: Callie experiences peer pressure and the heavy impact of secrets, Billy tries to understand his changing family dynamics, and Ted faces the reality of bullying and changing friendship dynamics.

Following a family tragedy, Sam Shipwright is sent to live with her grandad on Draymur Isle, an island as cold as the people who inhabit it. While Sam tries her best to adjust to her new life - ignoring her classmates’ jabs about her mad grandad, trying to keep Myrtle, her chaotic pet goat, from eating her shoes, and avoiding the relentlessly cruel Major Chase - she also has to learn to accept a terrifying truth.

This book is a newly edition edition of six stories written by Herminie Templeton Kavanagh in the early 1900s, produced by children’s literature scholar Brian McManus.

This is an inspiring collection of poetry, gorgeously illustrated and presented. The cloth bound cover promises magic within, and the book delivers on every page. Editor Ella Risabridger’s introduction sets the tone and both it and the conclusion are thought provoking and beautiful. They whisper gently about acceptance of all our different ways of being, about stepping into our own power and what it means to be alive in this time.