England (UK)

Lola Loves Stories

Lola loves to hear Daddy read a new library book each night, an activity that spurs her imagination and results in inventive play the next day.

Desperate Measures

Vicky has always felt responsible for her mentally disabled twin sister, Rhianna, and their feisty little brother, Jamie. So when the foster care system threatens to split them up, they all run away together, heading for a distant relative’s home. After a difficult journey, they arrive only to find strangers living there. With nowhere else to go, they hide in a cave, and must survive by their wits. By the end of their adventure, Vicky is surprised to find that the sister she thought she was protecting is the one who saves her. This touching, funny, fast-paced novel was short listed for the Waterstone’s Children’s Book Prize. Vicky and Rhianna’s engaging dual-perspective narration offers a refreshing view of people with disabilities, and their wild adventure and fierce family bond will resonate with readers.

Small Acts of Amazing Courage

It is 1918, six months after the end of World War I, and Rosalind awaits the return of her father from the war. While it is common practice for British children in India to be packed off to boarding school at the age of 6, Rosalind is unusual because she lives and is schooled in India because her mother insists. The heart of this penetrating story is Rosalind’s coming of age set against the hardship of life for the Indian people, Rosalind’s daily life in India, the rise of Ghandi and Rosalind’s coming to make her own decisions and become her own person.

Bloodline Rising

A story of loyalties tested, secrets exposed, and one boy’s search for identity amid the tangled political intrigue and deception of the Dark Ages. A young thief known as “the Ghost” roams seventh-century Constantinople, tangling in political feuds and petty theft, using his eerie gifts of persuasion and stealth. With his father away at war and his mother devastated by his little sister’s death, Cai would rather be anywhere than at home. But when a rival ambushes and sells Cai as a slave, he begins to regret his choices. Aboard the slavers’ ship, Cai travels far from the warmth of Constantinople into his parents’ homeland, the forbidding land of Britain, where war is brewing between tribes. Bought by a clan head, Cai finds a new life as a tribal member, and using his uncanny talents, is put to work as a spy. The secrets he discovers, however, kindle doubt and disloyalty in his heart. Adrift in a society he still feels apart from, Cai seeks truth and revenge, throwing his life to the wind with startling results.

The Coven’s Daughter

It’s Spring again in the village of Montacute, and people want nothing more than to celebrate the season with maypole dances, festivals, and visits from the nobility. The festivities are dampened, though, when a young boy turns up dead outside the village. Then they learn that three other boys have also disappeared lately. To the parson, this tragedy is a perfect excuse to kick off the only thing guaranteed to get his spring-giddy parishioners back to church – a witch hunt. Cecily may have occasional visions, but that doesn’t make her a witch! Fatherless and without friends, Cess knows she’s lucky to be employed by a grand estate like Montacute House, even if it is as a poultry girl. On her thirteenth birthday, Cess finds a precious locket in one of her chicken coops, a strange discovery that’s quickly overshadowed by her best friend John’s disappearance two days later. The parson has already started planting rumors that the missing boys were bewitched, and the villagers think Cecily may be the culprit.  The only way Cess can prove her innocence is by finding John, but she’s soon embroiled in a plot that threatens her world and forces her to draw upon powers she never knew she possessed. Witchcraft, politics and religious ambition combine in this gripping and wonderfully realized novel set in the Somerset of the 1500s.

Under the Green Hill

Meg and her siblings have been sent to the English countryside for the summer to stay with elderly relatives. The children are looking forward to exploring the ancient mansion and perhaps discovering a musty old attic or two filled with treasure, but never in their wildest dreams did they expect to find themselves in the middle of a fairy war. When Rowan pledges to fight for the beautiful fairy queen, Meg is desperate to save her brother. But the Midsummer War is far more than a battle between mythic creatures: Everything that lives depends on it. How can Meg choose between family and the fate of the very land itself?  

Kat, Incorrigible

Katherine Ann Stephenson has just discovered that she’s inherited her mother’s magical talents, and despite Stepmama’s stern objections, she’s determined to learn how to use them. But with her eldest sister Elissa’s intended fiance, the sinister Sir Neville, showing a dangerous interest in Kat’s magical potential; her other sister, Angeline, wreaking romantic havoc with her own witchcraft; and a highwayman lurking in the forest, even Kat’s reckless heroism will be tested to the upmost. If she can learn to control her new powers, will Kat be able to rescue her family and win her sisters their true love?

The Kneebone Boy

Life in a small town can be pretty boring when everyone avoids you like the plague. But after their father unwittingly sends them to stay with an aunt who’s away on holiday, the Hardscrabble children take off on an adventure that begins in the seedy streets of London and ends in a peculiar sea village where legend has it a monstrous creature lives who is half boy and half animal. In this wickedly dark, unusual, and compelling novel, Ellen Potter masterfully tells the tale of one deliciously strange family and a secret that changes everything.