Europe

Materials from Europe

The Red Ribbon

As 14-year-old Ella begins her first day at work she steps into a world of silks, seams, scissors, pins, hems and trimmings. She is a dressmaker, but this is no ordinary sewing workshop. Hers are no ordinary clients. Ella has joined the seamstresses of Birkenau-Auschwitz, as readers may recognise it. Every dress she makes could mean the difference between life and death. And this place is all about survival. Ella seeks refuge from this reality, and from haunting memories, in her work and in the world of fashion and fabrics. She is faced with painful decisions about how far she is prepared to go to survive.

The Language Of Spells

Grisha the dragon is born in the Black Forest in 1803, the last year any dragon was born, and while young he was trapped by the emperor’s sorcerer, and turned into a teapot, which was frustrating but kept him alive while magic and other dragons were disappearing–until one day he meets Maggie, a poet’s daughter, and the two of them set out to discover what happened to all the other dragons.

The Land Of Neverendings

Emily’s world is shattered after her sister dies and she finds she misses her sister’s teddy bear, Bluey, almost as much as her sister. Then Emily dreams of talking toys who have a message from Bluey, but soon discovers that magic from the toy world is spilling out into the real world with disastrous consequences. Emily must decide whether finding Bluey is worth risking the lives of those she loves.

The Storm Keeper’s Island

Fionn Boyle, terrified of the sea, must spend the summer with this older sister, Tara, and their grandfather on Arranmore, an island that has been known to make people disappear, and seems to be restless again.

Straw Into Gold

A collection of ten classic fairy tales, reimagined with fresh perspectives and unexpected twists, giving glimpses into happily, and not as happily, ever afters.

Searching For Lottie

A long-lost cousin, a mysterious locket, a visit to Nana Rose in Florida, a diary written in German, and a very special violin all lead twelve-year-old Charlie to the truth about her great-aunt Lottie in this intriguing, intergenerational mystery.

Resistance

In 1942 sixteen-year-old Chaya Lindner is a Jewish girl living in Nazi-occupied Poland, a courier who smuggles food and documents to the isolated Jewish ghettos in southern Poland, depending on her forged papers and “Aryan” features–but when a mission goes wrong and many of her colleagues are arrested she finds herself on a journey to Warsaw, where an uprising is in the works.

The Bookshop Girl

Property Jones and her family are in dire straits when they win a drawing for the greatest bookstore in England but the previous owner was hiding something nearly as big as Property’s secret.