Growing up

Frankie Finkleton’s world is a very busy one. She’s a typical eleven-year-old with a loving family and lots going on at school. Frankie also has a sideline as a very secret investigator and from time to time goes on adventures to an imaginary world called Thoughtopolis with her younger brother Fred and her dog Blue.

Noor and Sal live in the desert town of Juniper, California. As part of the tiny Muslim community, they are treated as outsiders in school. Their lives have been filled with trouble and tragedy, but they have grown up almost as brother and sister under the loving eye of Sal’s mother Misbah. It is the voices of these three complex and wonderfully-developed characters that narrate this engrossing YA title.

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.

Set on a ship-theatre, docked in a gloriously stinking, tatterdemalion alt-Bristol, Mouse Heart is the tale of a theatre-orphan turning detective to save her friend from the gallows and the fictional Queen Anne II from assassination.

Described as The Greatest Showman meets The Night Circus for children and young readers, this original and thrilling fantasy novel focuses on young Harper, following the revelation that she has been gifted special powers from the stars, and has been accepted into a travelling theatre and boarding school.

This is the second collection of poetry by Gambian British poet Sophia Thakur. Through her strong narrative voice and arresting language, this collection explores Sophia’s expressed need to understand how the women in her life became so ‘compassionate, fierce, gentle and powerful.’ Loosely grouped into themes, the collection covers a broad range of subjects, woven through with common threads of love, God, and the formidable influence of her family and friends. Her poems resonate with a powerful rhythm.

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 Light Thieves is an exciting new series that follows Grain and his friends as they work together to search for Grain's missing sister, Solas, who has run off to a wonderful, high-tech new city developed by billionaire Howard Hansom. However, along with Grain, we soon begin to see that not everything is as it seems.