Pretty, popular Grace seems surrounded with love and support and is looking forward to the neighbourhood Halloween party with her brother and her best friends. But that night a spark from a bonfire causes a terrible accident. Grace is left badly burned, with livid facial scarring, and not only her life, but that of her family and their friends, will never be the same again.
Lucas DuBois, a teenage orphan living in the Chantilly region of Nazi-occupied France, is tired of being called Petit Éclair and mocked for being sensitive and cowardly. But bullying is a way of life in this society of suspicion and secrets, where people will do anything to survive.
Award-winning Brian Conaghan is well known for his gritty, heartfelt teen fiction, and Stealing Happy is a very welcome addition to his work.
From Carnegie Medal-winning author Katya Balens comes this emotionally rich story of a boy’s life-transforming friendship with an elderly neighbour and his pigeons. Con’s dad has left, leaving him consumed by grief and guilt which he struggles to express except as violent anger. Con’s outbursts hurt and alienate friends and teachers, and worry his hard-working, long-suffering mother, but he seems powerless against their force.
‘It’s November, midnight: the perfect time to steal a corpse.’ From the first sentence of Dracula & Daughters, the first book in Emma Carroll’s new adventure series, we are plunged straight into a fully realised alternative reality. Temstown (a version of London; say it aloud and it makes sense) has managed to stay free of vampire ‘contagion’ for twenty years. But when a popular young actress, Elsie Irving, dies onstage fear stalks the streets. Is Elsie safely in her grave, or have vampires once more unleashed their horror?
Judith Eagle is well established as a writer of middle grade adventures with a classic feel, and fans will be delighted with her excellent fourth novel, The Stolen Songbird. The songbird of the title is a painting, one of a series of three whose theft is at the centre of this lively tale. Part heist, part family mystery, The Stolen Songbird bounds along with great verve, plenty of twists, but also a lot of heart and compassion.
Joseph Coelho is justly celebrated as a poet, performer and champion of children’s reading and writing. The Girl Who Became a Tree, described as ‘a story in poems,’ is a twisty, heartfelt tale which weaves together the Greek legend of Daphne, turned into a tree to avoid the attentions of the god Apollo, and a modern story of loss, memory and acceptance.
