A whimsical celebration of a child’s imagination and all the places it can travel. Filled with inventive twists, this charming circular story begins and ends in a tidy front yard, but in between winds its way through the wilds of a magical reality.
Once I escaped from an orphanage to find my Mum and Dad. Once I saved a girl called Zelda from a burning house. Once I made a Nazi with toothache laugh. My name is Felix. This is my story.
Flightsend is Charlie’s new home, whether she likes it or not. Her mother sees it as an end to all that’s gone so tragically wrong. They had been a proper family. Mum; her boyfriend, Sean; and Charlie, with a new baby sister on the way. But the baby died before she was born and everything changed. Gradually, Charlie’s mother pushed Sean away, before resigning from her job and selling the house. Charlie is certain that the move to a ramshackle cottage, miles from anywhere, can only make things worse. She couldn’t be more wrong. For Charlie’s mum there’s a new business and the fresh start that she knew she needed. And for Charlie there’s a new job, new friends, a newly discovered talent for art, and new feelings for two very different men. It’s a summer of beginnings, not ends; a summer that Charlie will never forget.
The fun fair is in town! With its clouds of pink candy floss and whirling big wheel, what child could resist such temptation? Little do the Eden sisters know that they are being lured into a wicked witch’s lair. . . . Belladonna wants Aurora’s heart and Storm’s all-powerful musical pipe, and she will stop at nothing to get them. Driven by vanity and greed, she makes a truly formidable adversary. After escaping from a deadly game of hide-and-seek in the enchanted fair, our three heroines flee through the woods, with several ravenous wolves and a sweet-toothed lion hot on their heels. Now they face their biggest challenge yet: a treacherous journey into the Underworld. For only when the pipe has been safely returned to the land of the dead will the Eden sisters truly be out of the woods. . . . From the Hardcover edition.
Whenever Jem meets someone new, no matter who, as soon as she looks into their eyes, a number pops into her head. That number is a date: the date they will die. Burdened with such an awful awareness, Jem avoids relationships. Until she meets Spider, another outsider, and takes a chance. But while they’re waiting to ride the Eye Ferris wheel, Jem notices that all the other tourists in line flash the same number. Today’s number. Today’s date. Terrorists are going to attack London. Jem’s world is about to explode!
It’s dawn, on an empty road in the countryside. Empty, except for the girl in the long, red evening gown, standing next to a bicycle, and looking back at the home she’s about to leave. Mannie’s ready to start a new life and forget the terrible things that have happened here, but there are questions that need to be answered before she can let go. Questions about her elegant but unstable mother, her brother who’s always overshadowed her, and his friend Harry Jacob, who just might be Mannie’s boyfriend. And her only clue is an unfamiliar address in Melbourne, written on a scrap of paper found in her brother’s room. As she makes her journey to the city, the mystery of this vulnerable, quirky girl is revealed piece by piece in her search for a way to become whole again. With rare sensitivity and a poetic voice that is unmistakably her own, Martine Murray tells a story about growing up and listening to your heart.
The international award-winning story of two girls from different backgrounds, united in friendship Parisian teenager Lou has an IQ of 160, OCD tendencies, and a mother who has suffered from depression for years. But Lou is about to change her life—and that of her parents—all because of a school project about homeless teens. While doing research, Lou meets No, a teenage girl living on the streets. As their friendship grows, Lou bravely asks her parents if No can live with them, and is astonished when they agree. No’s presence forces Lou’s family to come to terms with a secret tragedy. But can this shaky, newfound family continue to live together when No’s own past comes back to haunt her? Winner of the prestigious Booksellers’ Prize in France, No and Me is a timely and thought-provoking novel about homelessness that has far-reaching appeal.
See the review at WOW Review, Volume 4, Issue 1
Skip, an eleven-year-old runaway, becomes friends with Billy, a homeless man, and together they flee a war-torn Australian city with six-year-old Max and camp out at a seaside amusement park, where they are joined by Tia, a fifteen-year-old ballerina, and her baby.
Wolf is on the run from the oppressive monastery where he was raised, from the ghosts and demons that haunt the windswept moors of Devil’s Edge, and from the shadows in the landscape that resemble the Devil himself. When Wolf rescues a strange child on Devil’s Edge, he takes her to a grand castle hoping to win the favor of its ruler. There he strikes up an unlikely friendship with a girl named Nest, and he thinks he’s finally found a place to call home. Wolf is determined to fit in, but not everything is as it seems at the castle. Dark forces are conspiring against Wolf and Nest, and a sinister enemy is looming closer than they could ever realize. With lies masquerading as reality, will Wolf and Nest learn who they can trust before it’s too late? Critically acclaimed author Katherine Langrish has created a wonderfully spooky and richly imagined world of ghosts and magical creatures, where good may be evil and light may give way to dark.
Having grown up in a miserable home for abandoned children, a young boy jumps at the chance to exchange places with the mysterious, flying “loblolly boy,” but once he takes on this new identity, he discovers what a harsh price he must pay.