Áine McGillicuddy

Piecing Me Together is a thought-provoking and engrossing novel about a young teenager, Jade, who describes herself as one of those girls ‘with coal skin and hula-hoop hips’ brought up to ‘take opportunities every chance we get’. Raised in New Columbia, one of the poorer areas of Portland, Oregon (the author’s native city), Jade, a bright, creative girl with a particular interest in learning new languages and the arts, certainly does avail, or at least is encouraged to avail, of many opportunities.

Set against the backdrop of the dramatic landscape of Norway’s icy fjords, vertiginous mountains and vast dark forests, The Hurting is inspired by Nordic noir with a fairy-tale twist of the cautionary kind and contains more than one passing reference to Brontë’s Wuthering Heights.

The Deepest Breath, the latest novel by award-winning Irish author Meg Grehan, is a beautiful, sensitive verse novel whose flowing narrative will carry you along with its eleven-year-old protagonist Stevie on her journey of self-discovery.

It’s Only Stanley is a deliberately misleading title as Stanley, the Wimbeldons’ family pet, is a resourceful, clever dog who certainly should not be taken for granted (nor indeed his DIY skills be underestimated!). Woken up by strange bump-in-the-night sounds over the course of one night, the Wimbeldons (and by extension the readers) are relieved to discover each time that ‘it’s only Stanley’ who is the cause of all the noise. From howling at the moon to clearing the bathtub drain, just what the mysterious Stanley is really up to keeps the reader intrigued right to the very end.

Barbara the cat is having one of those bad days, although she refuses to admit it at first. It starts with a frustrating sock problem in the morning, followed by a tense lunch, thanks to the presence of a rather strange-looking pea on her plate. Despite her perplexed friends’ best efforts, her mood just gets worse and worse … until she throws a real wobbler.

Dangerous Games will grip the reader from start to finish. This is an absorbing story set in working-class contemporary urban Ireland. Young teenager Kevin seems at first an improbable hero, but as this fast-paced novel draws to an exciting conclusion, he displays both courage and resourcefulness when he becomes enmeshed in a dangerous plot concocted by his increasingly sinister Uncle Davey, recently released from prison, and his troublesome older brother, Adam.

Wilson’s début teen novel is an exciting fantasy thriller set in a dystopian future. The inhabitants of Earthasia eke out a miserable existence struggling to survive on ever-dwindling food resources and in cramped, congested living spaces on their environmentally damaged continent. Neighbouring continent Piloria, across the dangerous seas, with its abundant vegetation and vast tracts of land, offers hope for a better life. There is just one problem. It is inhabited by fearsome dinosaurs and monsters, both on land and under water.

William Sutcliffe’s most recent young adult novel We See Everything is an absorbing and chilling tale of life in a fenced-in and heavily surveyed, three-mile wide section of London, known as The London Strip. Set in a dystopian future where technology has been developed to deadly levels to remotely control, maim and even eliminate The Strip’s inhabitants, the environment is at times also grimly reminiscent of Dickens’s portrayals of Victorian slums in its descriptions of crippling poverty, cramped, congested living spaces and the struggle to survive in a harsh urban environment.