What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?

Ever since the night Liliana Crane cut too deep, her family and friends have been anxious about her imminent self-destruction.

Then Lil catches her boyfriend making out with her best friend, and everyone’s worst fears come true when Lil steals a car and sends what seems to be a suicidal text before running head on into another car. She’s horrified when she wakes up in the hospital and learns that she accidentally killed her English teacher. Lil’s guilt is so consuming that she tells the police she meant to cause the accident, even though that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Before Lil can come to terms with her mistake, she is put on trial for murder, and her life becomes even more hellish than before. In the midst of chaos, she unexpectedly finds love and learns the true meaning of forgiveness. The question becomes whether she can forgive herself and carry on with the crushing weight of her regret.

When you’ve done something so terrible that you can’t bear to look at yourself in the mirror, what makes life worth living?

Every. Little. Thing.

Category: Young Adult

Joy killed a guy. His name was Adam Gordon, and he raped her twin sister Grace, ruining her golden life. No one knows what happened except Joy – and Preston, her geeky, autistic, oldest friend. But now Joy has lost Grace, the most important person in her life, her family’s imploding – and there’s worse to come.  Joy decides she has to get Adam out of town by whatever means. So when he turns nasty that night in the woods, she stabs him in the neck with a syringe of knock-out drug. Call it self-protection. Call it just desserts for what he did to Grace. Call it making sure no one else suffers at the hands of douchebag Adam.

Joy never really meant to kill him. Or did she? Whatever, it looks like the perfect crime – except Joy didn’t think too much about Adam’s grieving father. Or that she might start falling for Levi, newly arrived in town to find out more about his half-brother. And she certainly never intended that Vince should swing in her place just because he was the obvious culprit.

Plagued with guilt, longing for redemption, Joy still knows she’s got away with it. Or has she? Because one night a note is shoved through her window: ‘You killed Adam Gordon. So you’re going to do what I want from now on. I’ll be in touch. Red.’

Now the anonymous blackmailer starts using Joy to expose the secrets of her placid hometown. But as Red’s demands escalate and he tells her to frame a friend for a crime he didn’t commit, she must somehow uncover Red’s identity before he forces her to make a terrible choice: confess, or watch Preston get sent to jail in her place.

Joy did it for love - an ordinary girl who wanted justice. But now she’s caught in Red’s manipulative trap and there’s only one way out . . .

Category: Young Adult

Ruby’s not even started to get over the death of her beloved dad, SWAT Sergeant Jack Rose, who got blown up in the line of duty – a very mysterious line of duty – a few months ago. Why is there a cone of silence over that night, and what does her District Attorney mom – much given to dodgy plea deals not to mention pathetic parenting – know about what happened, and the unnerving detective who’s supposedly heading the investigation?

But Ruby’s hiding her own secrets. To deal with her dad’s demise, she’s found the perfect outlet for her skills - tracking five notoriously vile criminals who got away from either her dad or her mom. If she can bring guys like Charlie ‘child abductor’ LeMarq to justice, she’ll prove she really is her father’s daughter. And if she can score a date to Homecoming with Mr. Pre-Season Favorite for Most Beautiful Eyes of the Senior Class – aka Liam Slater – then maybe life could even turn sweet again.

Lured to a dingy warehouse, Ruby finds herself in a crazy standoff against desperate men intent on killing a girl – a girl who looks freakily like Ruby herself. All Ruby can do is shoot to kill. But that bullet is only the first, as Ruby finds herself set up to take out all five murderous men on her list. Suddenly Ruby’s turned into the world’s first well-meaning teen serial killer. But also on a crazy journey with Liam – in the very coolest shoes - into the dangerous truth about her own mysterious past . . .

Category: Young Adult

Not gay enough for her ex-clique; not tiny and white enough for ballet, her first passion; not sick enough to look anorexic (partially thanks to recovery): Etta doesn’t fit anywhere— until she meets Bianca, the straight, white, Christian, and seriously sick girl in Etta’s therapy group. Both girls are auditioning for Brentwood, a prestigious New York theater academy that is so not Nebraska. Bianca seems like Etta’s salvation, but how can Etta be saved by a girl who needs saving herself? 

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In their city of Ferrum, there is a tenuous truce with the subterranean trolls— that is until the Tightropers arrive to “liberate” the fairies. Sixteen-year-old Beckan Molloy is one of the only fairies to stay behind when the war begins. To survive, she turn tricks for the gnomes, a risky proposition as most would gobble a fairy whole as soon as sleep with her. Beckan finds herself caught between two opposing factions. On one side, Tier, the kind gnome boy who needs Beckan’s romantic advice. On the other side, Piccolo, a tightroper general’s son who protests the war. In the middle, her boys, Scrap and Josha, too close to be lovers, but something more than friends. No fairy tale, this “scrapbook” tells a story of love during wartime.

Category: Young Adult

The long, bitter winters are getting worse, and a state of emergency has been declared across Europe.

In Poland, the villagers are subject to frequent power cuts and fuel shortages. After the death of her grandmother and the evacuation of her village, fifteen-year-old Magda joins forces with the arrogant, handsome Ivan and smuggles her way onto a truck bound for London - where she hopes to find her mother.

But London, when they reach it, is a nightmarish world, far from welcoming. Riots are commonplace and the growing chaos is exploited by criminals and terrorists alike. Magda’s mother is not to be found, and as the lost girl struggles to come to terms with her changing situation, she eventually becomes friends with a rag-tag group of travellers planning a new home and future.

They will need all the cunning and know-how they possess as they realise that the frozen wilderness of Britain has become just as lawless as the city.

Category: Young Adult

Seventeen-year-old tetrachcromat Micheline Helsing sees ghosts in Technicolor. Able to capture the dead on film, she has trained since childhood to destroy monsters corporeal and spiritual. When a routine hunt goes awry, Micheline is infected with a curse known as a soulchain. Now Micheline is on the run, pursued as a renegade agent by her monster-hunting father, with only seven days to exorcise the entity or be destroyed body and soul. The chase will take her through the veil and into the darkest corners of her own past.

Category: Young Adult

A new drug, Heam, is taking hold and dealers are the new gods. Cruel gods. When Faye was a little girl, she and her best friend Christian were attacked and forced to take it, but Faye overdosed, leaving her with the telltale scars of a Heam addict. Christian died.

Seven years on, Faye is an outsider, training every day to take revenge on those that destroyed her future and murdered her best friend. Now she is ready, and someone from her past is coming to help.

Category: Young Adult

Take two sisters: brainy 12-year-old Galileo Galilei Barnes (better known as GiGi) and her big sister Delta Dawn II - a Junior High dropout-turned-hairdresser (better known as DiDi).

Add a move from the trailer parks of South Carolina to the Gold Coast of New York.

Mix in a fancy new school, a first crush, and a generous serving of delicious food.

Then top it all off with a supposedly dead Mama and her very special lipstick.

Here’s the recipe for THE TRUTH ABOUT TWINKIE PIE, the story of what happens when GiGi and DiDi say goodbye to their home in the South, leaving everything behind — except their dead Mama’s cookbook of trailer park recipes, all laced with homespun wisdom and loving care. After all, recipes play a big part in the sisters’ lives. DiDi has even given GiGi a Recipe for Success that is sure to head her straight for an Ivy League education, and nothing – not even their secret $1 million win in a cooking competition – is going to deflect from GiGi’s academic journey to the stars.

But GiGi figures that in her new home, in this utterly different world of privilege, it’s time to try her own recipes. Like how to make good friends as easily as she makes good grades. Like how to Tell It Like It Is, instead of always pretending. Maybe even how to turn her boy friend, Trip, into A Boyfriend. And especially, how to find a tube of Mama’s favorite lipstick, Revlon’s Cherries in the Snow - discontinued now for twenty years.

GiGi’s always known that she walked in her Mama’s smart and beautiful footsteps – that she was given the name of an astronomer for some big reason. But now, as she seeks to reinvent herself, GiGi stumbles upon a clue that could change everything. Suppose her dead Mama wasn’t so dead after all.  Suppose she had to reinvent herself from a basketful of mystery ingredients?

More than anything, this is a story about growing up, discovering who you really are – and what to make from what life has given you.

Category: Ages 8 - 12

Raised in the dying auto-factory town of Grey Iron, Michigan (based on Saginaw), 17-year-old Anna O’Mally is a born writer – gifted, perceptive, headed for the stars. Or she was, until the day, one year ago, when the person she loved more than anyone else died. Joe was her uncle, raised as her brother, barely older than Anna herself, but she worshipped the ground he walked on, treasured his opinions, and lived in the glow of knowing she was the most important person in his world too.

But there’s one thing hardly anyone else knows: Anna killed Joe. Oh, she never meant to. How could she have guessed that because of her neediness, her refusal to share him, Joe would catch the pneumonia that would kill him? But Anna knows she’s a murderer, and now her family’s slowly imploding around her. Worst of all, her beloved words, all those first lines she was destined to write, have run dry and she knows she’ll never write again.

With Joe’s one-year deadaversary, Anna’s great healing is supposed to begin, but that looks totally impossible. Until Anna meets Mateo, the young chef from the wrong side of the river who turns food into art and somehow begins to melt her carefully constructed walls of pain.  Until she discovers a strange email that suggests she maybe didn’t know saintly Joe quite as well as she thought she did. And until her beloved grandfather’s last illness begins a trail of events and discoveries that breaks open everything Anna thought she knew and understood about her family, the past, the possibilities of love – and origami.

As Anna goes in search of the truth, she discovers that while every story, every human being, has a last line, it might still be possible to find the words for a new beginning. But first of all she must step into the most unsettling story of all – her own.

Category: Young Adult

Descended from an Irish demigod, Brianna has fled to Ireland to escape destruction at the hands of her sworn enemies, the Sons of Killian. Taking refuge at the estate of her former nemesis, Austin Montgomery, Brianna discovers a rift in time that opens to an era before the feud began.

Wrestling with her newfound feelings for the more innocent Austin, Brianna begins to wonder if she can alter the past. But when Brianna and Austin learn that the Sons are raising an army of mythical beasts, the pair will need to use their magical strength in the present to avoid a tragic end.

Category: Young Adult

16-year-old Erin is a smart if slightly dorky teenager, her life taken up with her best friend Trina, her major crush on smoky-eyed, unattainable Michael, and fending off Faith, the vision of perfection who’s somehow always had the knife in for Erin. Her dad, a pilot, died when she was very young, but Erin and her mom are just fine on their own.

Then everything changes forever one day after school when Erin’s mom announces she has breast cancer. And there’s even worse news to come. Horrified, Erin discovers that her grandmother’s death from cancer is almost certainly linked, the common denominator a rare gene mutation that makes cancer almost inevitable. And if two generations of women in the family had this mutation, what does that mean for Erin? The chances she’s inherited it are frighteningly high.  Would it be better to know now and have major preemptive surgery or spend as much life as she has left in blissful ignorance?

As Erin grapples with her terrible dilemma, her life starts to spiral downwards, alleviated only by the flying lessons she starts taking with grumpy Stew and his little yellow plane, Tweetie Bird. Up in the sky, following in her dad’s footsteps, Erin finds freedom chasing the horizon.  Down on the ground it’s a different story, and facing betrayal from Trina, humiliation from Faith, and a world of disappointment with Michael, Erin knows she must discover the truth about herself. Sure enough, she’s positive for the gene that’s slowly killing her mom.

Suddenly, Erin’s life has turned into a nightmare, and the only person she can truly talk to is a girl called Ashley who she meets online. But when, in a moment of madness, Erin flies away with Tweetie Pie to find her new friend, she finds herself on a journey that will take her through not only shock and despair - but ultimately to a new understanding of the true meaning of beauty, meaning, and love.

Category: Young Adult

As Cole begins to accept her new life as Akhet, every new vision from her past lives helps explain more about who she is in this life. Her love for Griffon grows as quickly as her Akhet abilities, while Cole
learns to recognize other Akhet around her, including Drew, a young millionaire who reveals a startling connection—he was Cole’s true love in Elizabethan England. But Drew’s intense desire to restore their
past relationship alienates Griffon. Caught between the person she was in the 15th century and the person she is now, Cole must decide who she loves and figure out her place in the Akhet’s worldwide plan as a rogue Akeht sets out to destroy them all.

With more epic romance and adventure, INTUITION brings readers further into this fascinating world where reincarnation changes all the rules for life and love.

Category: Young Adult

When Cole Ryan visits the Tower of London, panic starts to rise as she realizes the visions are getting worse. Everywhere she goes, everything she touches, seems to trigger vivid scenes of a time she doesn’t know, in a place she’s never lived. The only rational explanation is that she’s losing her mind. Or is it?

The moment Griffon Hall sees Cole in London that day, he knows immediately that she’s special, like him—that these aren’t visions, but glimpses into their own past lives. And he knows for certain their paths were meant to cross in this life…

With Griffon’s help, Cole realizes her status as Akhet, people who must take the wisdom they’ve gathered over centuries of past lives and use it for good. But not all Akhet are honorable, and a rogue is after Cole to avenge a shared past that she barely remembers. Piecing together clues from many lifetimes, Cole discovers a secret that could ruin her only chance at a future with Griffon—a future they are destined to share—and risking his love could be the only way to save them both.

Category: Young Adult

Everyone has secrets. Some are just bigger and dirtier than others. For sixteen years, Lucy has kept her mother’s hoarding a secret. She’s had to—nobody would understand the stacks of newspapers and mounds of garbage so high they touch the ceiling and the rotting smell that she’s always worried would follow her out the house. After years of keeping people at a distance, she finally has a best friend and maybe even a boyfriend if she can play it right. As long as she can make them think she’s normal.

When Lucy arrives home from a sleepover to find her mother dead under a stack of National Geographics, she starts to dial 911 in a panic, but pauses before she can connect. She barely notices the filth and trash anymore, but she knows the paramedics will. First the fire trucks, and then news cameras that will surely follow. No longer will they be remembered as the nice oncology nurse with the lovely children—they’ll turn into that garbage-hoarding freak family on Collier Avenue. With a normal life finally within reach, Lucy has only minutes to make a critical decision. How far will she go to keep the family secrets safe?

Category: Young Adult

What would you do to protect your secrets? Nell has packed her emotions away in a suitcase. But after a frightening encounter with a horse the case is stolen.

Staying in the country with family she’s never met before, Nell is drawn to a mysteriously wild, troubled girl. Angel has a strange affinity with horses and dark secrets she’s unwilling to share. Secrets that she’ll do anything to protect.

But Nell and Angel will discover that to care for the things they love the most they must trust each other, to save a hundred horses…

Category: Ages 8 - 12

Book 3 in the exciting ASH MISTRY series

Category: Young Adult

Three months after returning to England, Ash Mistry is trying to get back to normal life, like high school and finally getting up the courage to ask Gemma out. But Parvati returns to let him know that Lord Savage is about to execute another evil plot. The Koh-I-Noor diamond, a powerful and divine super-weapon, has been stolen from the Tower of London and is to be sold to Savage. With the diamond, Savage could wreak havoc on the world and bring back the dead. Ash sees his chance to finally stop Savage, so he and Parvati set out to find the Koh-I-Noor before Savage does.

But in their quest to stop Savage, they are attacked by his people and Ash’s friend Gemma is killed. Devastated, Ash blames himself for her death, and decides they should use the Koh-I-Noor to bring her back to life. But in order to get the diamond and save his friend, Ash must work with Savage, the only one who knows how to use the super weapon. As Ash gets pulled deeper into Savage’s plans, he confronts ancient powers, long-destroyed kingdoms, and even his friends. Will it all be worth it in order to bring Gemma back to life?

Category: Young Adult

When Kat Laskey’s dad tells her his new job is hosting the web show Local Haunts and they’ll be living on the road visiting the world’s most haunted places, Kat packs her bags without a second thought. To keep her Grandma (a self-proclaimed spook-a-holic) and her friends back in Ohio up to date on her adventures, Kat starts her own blog: The Ex-Kat Files, with “a behind the scenes look at the creepiest show on the web.”

But the ghostbusting life isn’t as glamorous as Kat expected. The show has gone through three hosts in three seasons, and it’s on a tight budget thanks to deadly low ratings. Plus, Kat still has to deal with school – and an annoying classmate, the producer’s nephew Oscar Bettencourt. Oscar’s habit of playing pranks that involve scary masks and a lot of screaming is not something she finds amusing.

But Oscar seems to be pretty serious when he tells Kat about the curse. At first, Kat doesn’t believe his stories about why the previous three hosts left the show. But the more she looks into it, the more they sound like classic cases of possession. And her dad is starting to act kind of strange. Even weirder is the fact that The Ex-KatFiles is getting a ton of comments from fans of the show…but one anonymous commenter has some ominous warnings. The more Kat digs, the more she realizes Local Haunts has a dark past all its own. And saving her dad – and the show – means facing the skeletons in all of their closets.

Category: Ages 8 - 12

Bee is twelve and being bullied at school. The ‘scholarship kid’ at a posh girls’ school, she can’t hide from Melissa Knight and her gang of wannabes. And when she thinks things can’t get any worse, her dad receives an odd letter and disappears to stay with his brother. Out of the blue, Bee’s nan whisks her and her mum off on a impromptu holiday to Spain. But with her mum acting oddly, a holiday is the last thing that Bee feels like.

Lizzie is twelve, and fed up with her parents. After her brother, Luke, died in a car accident when she was three, Lizzie’s always felt in his shadow. Homeschooled, and over-protected by her parents, she feels suffocated. And going to Spain, to the same place they go every year to commemorate the tenth anniversary of her brother’s death, is the very last thing that Lizzie wants to do.

When Lizzie and Bee meet on the beach in Spain however, they form an instant friendship. But after a chance meeting reveals that their two families used to be close, Bee and Lizzie’s friendship is pushed to the limit by a shocking secret about Luke’s death that forced their families apart.

With their parents against their friendship, it’s up to the two girls to find out what really happened on the Costa del Cueva and to try and bring their families together again.

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Liv feels there are just too many rules in life; every-day rules; rules for helping her Aspergic big brother Isaac make sense of the world; rules for a life that mum wants to teach Liv before she dies.

When mum’s health starts to get bad, Liv half knows that she doesn’t have much time left. Mum’s trying to cram a lifetime of love, shopping and one-on-ones into a few months, and for the first time treating her like a grown up.

With Isaac’s help, who only really seems to connect with his Playstation friends on the other side of the world, and her mother’s teenage diaries, which show such a different side of her frail mum, Liv needs to overcome the anger and sadness of being left behind by the person who loved her more than anyone.

Category: Ages 8 - 12

What would you do if you were desperate?

Bea, Alina, and Quinn are outlaws. They started a rebellion and have been thrown out of the pod—the only place where there’s enough air to breathe.

Bea has lost her family. Alina has lost her home. And Quinn has lost his privileged life. What will they find, now that they are refugees in the perilous Outlands?

Their final safe haven may be harboring dark secrets.  But together, the three teens can find the will to keep fighting, to save one another, and to break free from everything that’s holding them back. 

Sarah Crossan has created a dangerous, shattered society, and brought to life three heartbreakingly relatable teenagers who come into their own. A wrenching, thought-provoking, and unforgettable post-apocalyptic novel.

Category: Young Adult

All Penelope Crumb wants is to be someone’s “Favorite.” She’d thought she was her Grandpa Felix’s Favorite, and her mom’s Favorite, and her friend Patsy Cline’s Favorite, but she’s starting to realize that maybe she’s not. And it’s all The Bad Luck’s fault. So since Penelope’s a superb artist, she comes up with a plan—she’s going to be the boss of the mural her school is making at the Portwaller’s Blessed Home for the Aged, which will make her into everyone’s Favorite.  And maybe it’ll frighten The Bad Luck away.

But things don’t quite go as planned there either. And when an old woman named Nila promises to help Penelope find her luck so everyone will like her again, things get even worse--because Nila wants Penelope to help her break out of the home!

In the end, Penelope finds out that friendships aren’t about luck—and that it doesn’t matter if you’re anyone’s Favorite when there are tons of people who love you. 

Category: Ages 8 - 12

Thirteen-year-old Xanthe Fox has only just recovered from the news that she is a True Witch - and from her triumph against Hexing Witch Donna down at the boating lake. Surely she is owed a few
weeks’ peace and quiet?

But she can think again. She is picking up bigger and brighter hexes than ever before, and to make things worse, Donna has started acting very strangely at school, whispering into her mobile and
excusing herself from lessons. When Xanthe overhears one of her conversations, she discovers that a group of Hexing Witches have convened in London and are hexing the Thames. Water levels are rising, and it is only a matter of time before the river will burst its banks and flood the capital.

With Grandma Alice in hospital, Xanthe must decide things for herself. Should she follow Donna to London and find out the whereabouts of the Hexing Witches’ headquarters? If so, can she put a stop to their evil plans and save London from disaster? And can she make it home in time for her hot date with Saul?

Category: Ages 8 - 12

America, today. A continent upended by the deaths of tens of millions of women from a synthetic hormone in meat. Now teen girls are the country’s most valuable commodity, watched over by guards, gates and Paternal Controls on phones, internet and media.

Seventeen-year-old Avie knows her life is over when her father contracts her in marriage to millionaire businessman Jess Hawkins to raise money for his ailing biotech company. Destined to be moulded into Hawkins’s perfect First Lady as he runs for governor on the Paternalist ticket, Avie knows she has to get away - to save who she is and everything she wants her life to be.

Yates, Avie’s childhood friend turned revolutionary, knows Avie has what it takes to make it to freedom in Canada. But on a perilous flight from the mansions of Los Angeles and Malibu to the cover of an exclusive escort service in Las Vegas, Avie begins to learn dangerous truths about who really controls the US government.  As her friendship with Yates turns to love, and pursued to the snowy Canadian border by government agents, she must discover whether she really is ‘a girl called fearless’. . .

Category: Young Adult

It’s ironic that Cass should be named after the goddess Cassandra, famed for her gift of prophecy and for always telling the truth. Ironic because Cass NEVER tells the truth about herself. How can she when everything she really feels ALWAYS has to be kept secret for fear of rocking the family boat? Like how she’s on her way to becoming an atheist, on the way to finally standing up for her gay brother, on the way to splitting with her condescending best friend. Oh, and also on the way to falling for Darin, the wise, funny, inky-fingered guy who sits next to her in English.

When her class has to write a poem ‘celebrating and singing’ themselves, Cass knows she just can’t do it. So instead she buys a pack of Tarot cards and poses as Divinia Starr, secret dispenser of wisdom and advice via the school newspaper. With her fundamentalist church up in arms, her school in turmoil, and the bullied girl who’s always trusted her attempting suicide, Cass finally has to work out who she really is and what she stands for. Is it finally time for Cass to step up and become truth-telling CASSANDRA?

Category: Young Adult

Being different is dangerous and Joseph is in big trouble.

In a time when hysteria about the dangers of imaginary friends is palpable, Joseph finds himself lumbered with Klaris. She’s a whispering voice in his ear, a buzz in the air, and when everyone else has gone, there she is. Waiting.

Speaking up for Klaris could mean the dreaded cosh for Joseph but in the end he doesn’t really have a choice – because protecting Klaris is the only hope Joseph has left of saving himself.

Category: Young Adult

The world is changing. The ice is melting. But as the icecaps retreat secrets are revealed, ancient ruins that have remained hidden for a hundred thousand years.
A civilisation that wasn’t human…

Fourteen year old Danni’s astronaut aunt is murdered, shot down by a sniper right in front of her eyes. As she dies she presses something into Danni’s hand and whispers: Tell no-one.

Suddenly Danni is the one in danger.  The evil Morgan Pew and his organisation EMMA, The European Mars Mission Agency, will stop at nothing to get their hands on what Danni now wears around her neck. When Danni’s uncle goes missing, it has to be Morgan Pew who’s responsible.

What powers does the artefact possess? And why does Pew want it so badly? To find the answers, and her uncle, Danni must brave flooded cities, marauding bands of scavengers, and travel across a Europe changed by the rising seas. 

Category: Ages 8 - 12

There’s nothing like a little friendly competition. When Holly Mead’s band director announces that their bake sale fundraiser will pit the sections against each other, Holly is positive the brass section will win. After all, the two most competitive kids in band are French horn players – Holly and Natasha Prynne. The girls might be rivals for first chair, but they don’t let it get in the way of their new friendship. Natasha is even helping Holly with the music for the all-region band auditions in a few weeks, when both girls will be competing not only with each other, but with other horn players from all of their district’s middle schools.

Holly can handle a friendly band rivalry with Natasha – but competing over boys is another story. Especially when that boy happens to be Aaron Cook. When Holly hears a rumor that Aaron is going to ask her to the winter dance, she’s ecstatic. After all, she has been talking to him a lot (and with hardly any drooling or stammering, too). Plus all the fortune cookies she’s been cracking open lately thanks to her brother’s new delivery job are about secret admirers and being lucky in love. So when Aaron ends up asking Natasha to the dance instead, Holly thinks she can’t feel much worse. Until she finds out that Natasha has had a secret crush on Aaron, too…she was just afraid of hurting Holly’s feelings.

With all the competition over boys and band, Holly and Natasha’s friendship is more than a little rocky. Before long, Natasha starts distancing herself from both Holly and Aaron. To make things even worse, a small disaster involving a rogue volleyball sets the brass section way behind in the band’s bake sale. Then Holly gets a brilliant idea that’s guaranteed to help them win – and with a little good fortune, it might save Holly’s friendship with Natasha, too.

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Sophie Winters nearly died. Twice.

The first time she was fourteen and Mina’s brother Trev ran a stop light. The car got totalled by a truck and after weeks in hospital, Sophie’s left with scars, pain, and metal screws in her leg.
The second time she’s seventeen and a masked man came out of the woods at Booker’s Point, hit her over the head with an iron bar and shot Mina, leaving her to die in a pool of blood.

The killer took everything Sophie wanted in life. Her complex and adored best friend, her love, her dreams and every hope she ever had for the future.

Everyone knows Sophie’s a user, addicted to Oxy. So when drugs are found on her, it’s an obvious leap to presume she’d persuaded Mina to drive her out that night to a fatal encounter with a drug dealer.

But Sophie’s been clean for months, and it was Mina’s idea to go to Booker’s Point. And Sophie remembers the killer saying, ‘I warned you’ before he fired the gun. So when she finally gets out of rehab – the detox place her distraught parents threw her into after the tragedy – she has just one goal left: to find the guy who killed Mina and make him pay.

Sophie’s painful journey to the truth will take her back to the roots of her tangled relationship with Mina and Trev, back to who she was and is and how she got there – but also forward to face the inescapable. That Mina has gone and she’s never coming back.

Category: Young Adult

Prince Dakkar, son of an Indian rajah, has issues with authority. Expelled from the world’s finest schools, he is sent to an unconventional educator, Count Oginski. Dakkar plans his escape immediately. But something about the Count intrigues him, including a top-secret project involving a submarine, which he shares with Dakkar.  But others are interested in the Count’s invention and what it might achieve and, when masked men kidnap the Count, leaving Dakkar for dead, he doesn’t know who was responsible. It could have been British Intelligence, or perhaps a sinister figure known only as Cryptos. Either way, Dakkar is determined to rescue the Count. Taking the prototype submarine, he sets off for adventure . . .

Cue shark attack, giant sea creatures, spies and an evil megalomaniac. From his undersea refuge, Dakkar plans to take them all on . . . with a bit of help from a Girl.

Category: Ages 8 - 12

Everyone knows that Mallory killed her sort-of-boyfriend, Brian. Brian’s mom definitely knows it, which is why Mallory has a restraining order against her. Her best friend Colleen knows it—she knew it enough to lie for her. Even her parents know it, which is why they ship her off to her father’s old boarding school. And Mallory’s glad to leave—her house is full of this feeling now. His ghost, or his presence. Or maybe his soul.

The lawyers called it self-defense, and Mallory can’t be charged. But that doesn’t change the way people look at her—accusing, and worse.

Monroe Prep is supposed to be her fresh start. But she suddenly finds herself thrown into a world where secrets are the only real currency. And someone—or something—has followed her there. Taunting her. Reminding her. Hurting her. The only one who wants to have anything to do with her is an old friend, Reid, but she’s not so sure that’s the best idea. Not when someone has been whispering her name at night. Not when she wakes up, bruised and afraid, questioning whether the marks on her skin are real.

Something is happening to Mallory. Someone—or something—is after her.

And then a classmate turns up murdered in her locked dorm room.

All eyes are on Mallory.

Again.

Category: Young Adult

The city of Ludlow is gripped by the hottest July on record.  The asphalt is melting, the birds are dying, petty crime is on the rise, and someone in Hannah Wagnor’s peaceful suburban community is killing girls.

For Hannah, the summer is a complicated one.  Her best friend Lillian died six months ago, and Hannah just wants her life to go back to normal. But how can things be normal when Lillian’s ghost is haunting her bedroom, pushing her to investigate the mysterious string of murders?  Hannah’s just trying to understand why her friend self-destructed, and where she fits now that Lillian isn’t there to save her a place among the social elite. And she must stop thinking about Finny Boone, the big, enigmatic delinquent whose main hobbies seem to include petty larceny and surprising acts of kindness.

With the entire city in a panic, Hannah soon finds herself drawn into a world of ghost girls and horrifying secrets.  She realizes that only by confronting the Valentine Killer will she be able move on with her life—and it’s up to her to put together the pieces before he strikes again.

Category: Young Adult

What do you do when something you intended for good goes terribly wrong?

In the summer before ninth grade,13-year-old Jess Westmark organizes her friends on Ft. Spencer Army base in Florida to collect school supplies for an orphanage in Afghanistan where their parents are serving in the US Army. The orphanage’s association with Americans, however, draws it under attack.

The explosion shatters lives in Kabul—and across the world in Florida.  Reeling from the impact, Jess struggles to respond, her actions not only having implications for her own family and the strained relationship with her best friend, whose life has forever been changed by the attack, but also for her growing sense of responsibility to others—even strangers continents away. 

Category: Ages 8 - 12

The cure for a broken heart? Go vintage and live like it’s 1962!

Mallory’s boyfriend, Jeremy, isn’t just cheating on her. He’s cheating with an online girlfriend. So Mallory decides to swear off boys and modern technology. Inspired by a list of goals her grandmother made in 1962, Mallory decides to “go vintage” and return to a simpler time. She sets out to complete grandma’s list: run for pep club secretary, host a dinner party, sew a homecoming dress, find a steady, do something dangerous.

The list proves to be trickier than it looks. Obviously finding a steady is out . . . no matter how intriguing she finds Oliver (er, Jeremy’s cousin). But with the help of her sister, Mallory will finish the list and find peace.

Somehow.

Category: Young Adult

The entire town of Sticks, Louisiana, fears the swamp that sleeps in its center, surrounded by an all too fragile picket fence. For 16-year-old Sterling Soucier, the swamp has always been a place to escape into magic and safety - until the day her brother Phineas climbs over the fence in a fit of rage and never comes back out.  After three days of searching, a strange, ethereal girl named Lenora May crawls out of the murky water, claiming to be Sterling’s sister. Suddenly, nobody but Sterling remembers Phin and the entire town accepts Lenora May without question.

Determined to rescue her brother, Sterling finds an unlikely ally in Heath Durham. Distant and quiet (though undeniably cute), Heath isn’t the sort of boy Sterling expects even to know her name. But one year ago, Heath lost his best friend to the swamp and he believes her story completely.

With Heath’s help, Sterling braves the mysterious, seductive, increasingly encroaching swamp in search of her brother, but what she finds instead is a relentless and powerful spirit who gave himself to the swamp a century ago and wants his sister Lenora May back - at any cost.

Category: Young Adult

Everyone says Falcon Lake is cursed. After all, Delaney nearly died there, and Troy really did. And even Carson died covered in water, even if everyone knows that was really just melted snow.

Decker doesn’t believe all the talk about curses, and he pretty much buys into Delaney’s statistical theory - that every year a certain number of people in any given town are bound to die. He certainly doesn’t join in when people look at Delaney in that suspicious way - like she has something to do with all the trouble. Like she doesn’t just predict who’s going to die - like she may actually be involved.

Decker has always loved Delaney. But when she comes to his house and backs away from his dad, pale faced and weird, everything changes. Because Decker’s father has an appointment coming with death, and Delaney never said a word.

Whatever the truth about Delaney, aren’t there some things that are unforgiveable?

Megan Miranda’s VENGEANCE, a companion novel and sequel to FRACTURE, told from Decker’s perspective, in which the lake that claimed victims appears to be cursed as more tragedy unfolds, raising the question of whether Delaney’s strange affinity with the dying is something even more sinister,

Category:

Wick Tate knows the good life with her new foster parents can’t last. Not when her criminal father could show up at any time. Not when she’s shadowed 24/7 by the detective who let her dad slip away once before. And not when she’s a hacker, breaking the law to help women avoid her mother’s fate – and to make a few bucks. Wick’s so sure she and her little sister Lucy will be moving on again that she doesn’t even bother to unpack.

But then one morning Wick finds a mysterious package on the doorstep. It’s addressed to her, and contains a journal in the handwriting of Tessa Waye - a girl with whom she used to be friends. Inside the book is a note: FIND ME.

Wick knows trouble when she sees it. But the journal is just the beginning, for when Wick gets to school she discovers that Tessa killed herself just a few hours ago and no one knows why. Not even Griff, the talented artist who’s sat one table over from Wick for years and turns out to have a few secrets of his own.

She’d love to walk away, but Wick knows her hacking skills make her the only person who can work out what happened to Tessa – and stop the same thing ever happening to another girl. Especially when the next kid in the frame is the most important person in her life – her very own sister, Lucy . . .

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It’s 1910, and the Honourable Miss Ada Averley arrives back from a childhood spent in India to prepare for her court presentation and the exciting prospect of her first season.

Everyone thinks she’s a perfect young lady, sure to marry well and redeem her ancestral home, Somerton Court, from the shadow of debt and disgrace. But Ada knows better. She has fallen in love – passionately, and with completely the wrong boy.

Thrown into a new family with a scheming step-sister, a step-mother bent on social advancement, and a step-brother with more than one shocking secret to hide, she finds herself living a double life. Little does she know that she’s not the only one…and that sooner or later, Somerton’s secrets are going to become Somerton’s scandals…

Category: Young Adult

Seventeen-year-old Rain would do anything to escape Planet Earth where people have begun tolose their minds before vanishing altogether. Now it looks like Rain’s beloved brother has become one of the ‘Touched’, and it’s only a matter of time before he disappears, leaving her alone in a bleak, dangerous world.

Desperate to save Walker’s life, Rain leaps at an offer of passage into the Void – the space highway - from Johnny, a darkly compelling captain who promises medical help on a distant planet. There’s only one hitch: Johnny is a trader, and he wants the one thing beautiful red-haired Rain has left to trade. Her body.

On board the Imreas, far out in the lawless Void, Rain makes some terrible discoveries.  Girls are swapped like commodities, the Touched are a secret cargo bound for an underground slave trade – and she is the property of a dangerous man. Only Johnny’s head servant Ben knows the truth and is prepared to bring Johnny down.

If Rain remains ‘Johnny’s girl’ she may save her brother’s life, but if she helps Ben she could save hundreds from a terrible end. Rain’s decision will take her on an epic journey not only through the universe, but also to reclaim her body, her self-worth – and the risky possibilities of love.

Category: Young Adult

Janine Friedman is famous. She’s the miraculous ‘soul survivor’ of a suicide bombing in a Jerusalem synagogue ten years ago. The bombing killed both her parents and changed not only her life, but also that of Dave Armstrong, the tourist who dug her out of the rubble and ‘found God’ as a result. Most people can remember where they were when it happened – the image of that little girl with her bleeding, ruined hands being dragged into the light.

Ten years on, Janine just wants to forget the past, though the nightmares persist. Sure, she avoids cameras and journalists like the plague, and her hands will never be quite right, but she’s one leg of a ‘tripod’ of friends – Miriam and Abe are always there for her – and the most she’s worrying about is whether she should settle for boyfriend Dan or still go after gorgeous Tyler.

Janine always knew the tenth anniversary would be tough. But then Abe is nearly killed in a road accident and ‘miraculously’ survives.  Another boy gets out of his wheelchair and starts to walk… And the common denominator is Janine, with her supposedly healing powers.

With Dave Armstrong back in town, Janine finds herself at the centre of a media storm. Forced to look more deeply into the past, she must finally seek the truth about her parents, her hands, and the terrible day that shaped her life.  What does she really believe about all three – and about herself? 

Category: Young Adult

‘You are now the most powerful girl in school.’ A new school. A new chance. This time, Maya will be the popular girl. This is what she tells herself as she steps into her classroom at Mount Selwyn High School. Instead, she is branded ‘tragically uncool’. But then she is assigned Locker 62. Locker 62, where pupils post their deepest darkest secrets: there’s the popular girl who has fallen for the class geek; the pupil who hates her life so much she plans to run away; the girl who has secretly betrayed her friend…

Could the secrets in Maya’s locker be her new chance? A route into the elite set? She lets her uncool but funny friend Frankie, and Zeba, a goth girl who is her only friend at Mount Selwyn, in on the game. But should Maya use the notes to boost her popularity or to help her classmates? And to do it, will she have to leave her old friends behind? 

Category: Ages 8 - 12

According to Penelope Crumb, the only thing good about fourth grade, besides art class, is field trips. That is, except when Miss Stunkel takes the class to the Portwaller History Museum. Because once there, it seems that Penelope is the only one who appreciates what museums are all about—remembering people. People who are Graveyard Dead, like her dad, for example. And if there’s one thing Penelope knows, it’s that if you forget about dead people, it’s like they were never here at all. But even worse than that, Patsy Cline Roberta Watson seems to be forgetting things—like the fact that she and Penelope are best friends.

Penelope doesn’t ever want to forget, so she starts a secret museum in her closet at home, collecting things that belong to other people, like her Grandpa Felix, her mom, Patsy Cline, and even Terrible the Alien. But keeping her museum a secret is hard to do. And when the worst happens, Penelope has to decide between losing the one thing that means the most to her or losing her best friend for good.

Category: Ages 8 - 12

Vee Bell’s gift (or curse) of “sliding”—slipping into the mind of another person and experiencing life, briefly, through his or her eyes—has been somewhat under control since she unwillingly witnessed the horrific deaths of her classmates six months ago.

But just as things are getting back to normal—and her relationship with her best friend, Rollins, is heating up—Vee has a very bizarre experience: she loses consciousness and finds herself in a deserted area, at the edge of a cliff, with the boy who had taken advantage of her last year near death on the rocks below.

As Vee finds herself in stranger and stranger situations with no memory of getting there, she begins to suspect that someone she knows has the ability to slide—and that this “slider” is using Vee to exact revenge on his or her enemies. 

Category: Young Adult

Holly Mead’s first day of 7th grade isn’t going as planned. Her brother ruins her carefully-chosen outfit, she’s almost late, and her new band director has some surprisingly strict rules. Worst of all, it seems like her best friend, Julia, has replaced her. Natasha is new at Millican Middle School, but she and Julia bonded at band camp over the summer. Natasha is pretty, smart, and as good at French horn as Holly – maybe even better.

Holly is determined to get first chair, but Natasha is turning out to be some pretty stiff competition – and not just in band. As Natasha and Julia get closer, Holly feels like she and her best friend are drifting further apart. Things only get worse when Holly fails her first science quiz. If she can’t pass, she won’t be able to participate in band, thanks to the new director’s “no pass no play” rule. That means no band party – and no opportunity to get to know a certain good-looking trumpet player named Aaron Cook a little better!

The harder Holly tries in band and with Julia, the worse everything seems to get. Maybe being second best in band isn’t the end of the world, but when it comes to best friends, Holly just has to be first. Band might be a competition, but friendship isn’t – and Holly needs to figure it out before she loses Julia for good.

Category: Ages 8 - 12

When Becky and her mum move to the tiny village of Oakbridge, Mum is hoping for a new beginning. But when Becky discovers an old photo of her mum in hospital clutching a baby, twelve years before Becky was born, Becky becomes haunted by the thought that her mum is keeping something from her.

Stifled by her mum’s over-protectiveness and depressive moods, Becky feels more alone than ever. The only place she finds comfort is at the beautiful local Butterfly Garden with her new friend, the wild-spirited and impulsive Rosa May. But Becky can’t shake off the unanswered questions. Why can’t she swim? Where is her dad? Who is the baby in the photo? And why is her mum lying to her?

As the two girls spend more time together however, Rosa May’s unpredictable temper and possessive streak suggests that she is hiding something as well...and in the heat of the sun-drenched summer, it seems that Becky is the only one in the dark.

Category: Ages 8 - 12

Time to stop running. Time to start fighting back. 

After the earthquakes came the infectious rage, turning friends into deadly enemies.

For survivors Michael, Aries, Mason and Clementine the battle to stay alive is about to get even tougher. The new world is organising itself, with camps that promise protection for the uninfected. But the reality of the sites is far more sinister. Besides, nobody is safe from the rage within their own soul . . .

Category: Young Adult

Nearly Boswell’s name is an adverb with glass-half-empty connotations. Appropriate, given she’s almost certain to win the scholarship that’s her route out of Sunny View trailer park, almost pretty under her second-hand clothes, and she almost likes her best friend as much as he likes her.

But Nearly has a deep, dark secret. She’s hopelessly addicted to the personal classified ads, which give her a hotline into the emotions of the writers. It’s an addictive rush – until a girl turns up drugged and naked under the bleachers, and a cryptic series of ads reveal clues to increasingly terrible crimes. Girls start turning up dead, and all the evidence points back to the one person capable of solving the clues – Nearly herself.

Reformed bad boy Reece Whelan is a narc. Working for the cops as a confidential informant is the only thing keeping him out of juvie. Helping police solve the chain of crimes could be his ticket to redemption, but shadowing Nearly is a challenge. The more Reece gets to know her, the harder it is to keep his distance, and as the evidence mounts against Nearly, Reece is sure not only that she’s being set up – but that he’s falling for the girl the cops think is the perp.

Drawn into a forbidden partnership, Reece fights to protect Nearly from the cops who suspect her and a calculating predator who has her second-guessing the people she loves. Somehow Nearly must work out the meaning of the mysterious numbers blue-inked on the victims and their connection to the puzzling ads But time is running out, and who can Nearly trust with her secrets, her heart, and her life?

Category: Young Adult

Fifteen-year-old Jake Knight is an explorer and adventurer at heart but this often gets him into trouble. When a stuffy English boarding school suspends him for rule-breaking, Jake flies out to Burkina Faso where his parents are living.

He is expecting a long, adventure-filled vacation under a smiling African sun. But what awaits him there is kidnapping, terrorism and Yakuuba Sor – the most wanted outlaw in the Sahara desert.

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Hilary Westfield has always dreamed of being a pirate. She wants nothing more than to sail the High Seas of Augusta in search of magical treasure—and to earn a smidgen of respect from her seafaring father. But the Very Nearly Honorable League of Pirates rejects Hilary’s application because she’s a girl, and her father ships her off to Miss Pimm’s Finishing School for Delicate Ladies instead.

Expected to wear woollen dresses (petticoats not provided) and enthusiastically throw herself into activities such as Viennese Waltzing for the Eager Novice, Miss Pimm’s is every bit as horrid as Hilary feared. However, a true pirate never lets dire circumstances stand in her way, and after a mostly dreadful first week, Hilary escapes and applies for a job with a freelance pirate known as the Terror of the Southlands. He offers her a place on his crew, on one condition: She must find the famous treasure that’s rumored to contain most of the kingdom’s lost magic. But how in the world is a pirate supposed to find treasure when her treasure map is useless and her crew consists of a governess, a spy, a budgerigar – and a gargoyle who enjoys being tickled behind the ears?  How should a pirate respond when Miss Pimm pursues her across the High Seas in a ship packed with schoolgirls? Most importantly, what does a pirate do when the nefarious scoundrel who’s also searching for the treasure turns out to be her father?

Hilary is certain of one thing. If she fails to find the treasure, she’ll be sent back to finishing school for good, and she’ll never get to be a pirate. Which means that high adventure lies ahead for Hilary!

Category: Ages 8 - 12

How DO you disappear when your life’s in danger? The suits’ rules are simple and extensive. Like, never use the internet. Don’t start conversations with random strangers. Don’t make friends. And never, ever fall in love.

She’s been so many people in so many places. Madeline in Ohio, Isabelle in Missouri, Olivia in Kentucky . . . . But now she’s Megan Rose Jones, newly arrived in Natchitoches, Louisiana with her family. Witness Protection has taken nearly everything from Meg, but this placement is the final straw. This time they’ve even cut and colored her beautiful blonde hair and turned her blue eyes brown. Meg’s family’s on the verge of implosion too. Pulled from their beds one too many times, her little sister’s traumatized, her mom’s drowning in booze, and her dad . . . Well, he’s fast becoming a silent, defensive stranger. What on earth did he do – or see - that landed them in this god-awful mess?

As she runs the gauntlet as a newbie (yet again) at Madison High School, Meg makes a few more rules - for herself this time.  1) Find out what the heck her father did.  2) Get them out of Witness Protection forever. And 3) Refuse to get close to anyone – it only ends in tears.

But Meg is about to discover that the truth of her family’s life on the run is very different to what she’d thought.  And she’d never reckoned on cute, floppy-haired farm boy Ethan Landry, whose determination to know the real Meg not only threatens to break her disguise wide open but also to penetrate her guarded heart.  On a crazy, perilous journey to free her family once and for all, Meg discovers that there’s only one rule that really matters – survival.

Category: Young Adult

With her rare magical powers and a gift for getting herself out of trouble, Desi Bascomb has become the darling of the Façade Agency. She’s the youngest girl ever to advance to level three as a full-time royal sub.

Now all eyes are on Desi, but she just wants a moment alone to talk to her crush Reed, who she’s discovered is actually a sub for princes! Except spending time with him might be Desi’s worst idea yet—Façade is spying on their every move, and her best friend Kylie has a crush on Reed, too.

But Desi also has deeper problems than lying to her BFF—Façade is hiding something big. Behind the glitz and glam of the agency is a dark secret: the misuse of magic. Desi knows it’s up to her to fix Façade’s suspicious practices, but if she gets caught, her magic and memories will be erased. Is she willing to sacrifice her time with Reed and job as a princess sub to do what’s right?

Desi’s last stand is her most triumphant, hilarious and unexpected adventure yet. Don’t underestimate this damsel in distress in the charming finale of the Princess for Hire series.

Category: Ages 8 - 12

Last night, Valley White celebrated her own funeral. This morning, she strapped on a vest full of explosives and set out to kill and be killed. But her plan has gone explosively wrong, and now Valley needs a driver to salvage her mission. That’s how Eric, age 16, and his little brother, Corbin, become pawns in Valley’s game. They are expendable and completely unprepared to disarm a girl who has been raised to be a weapon and knows exactly why she wants to die.

Category: Young Adult

‘I know where Tilla-Beri is,’ says Penda. ‘I can take Daddy his milk.’

‘All right,’ says Mum. ‘Try not to spill any on the way.’

The magical story of a little girl who travels across rivers and deserts to take her Daddy his supper.

Category: Picturebooks

For eight years, Loa Sollilja’s world ran like one of those mechanical models of the solar system, with her baby sister, Asta, as the sun. Asta suffered from a genetic disorder that left her a permanent infant, and caring for her was Loa’s life. Everything spun neatly and regularly as the whole family orbited around Asta.

But now Asta’s dead, and 16-year-old Loa’s clockwork galaxy has collapsed. As Loa spins off on her own, her mind ambushes her with vivid nightmares and sadistic flashbacks - a textbook case of PTSD. But there are no textbook fixes for Loa’s short-circuiting brain. She must find her own way to pry her world from the clutches of death.

THE FREAK OBSERVER is a startling story of death, life, astrophysics, and finding beauty in chaos.

Category: Young Adult

2012 – A star-gazing teenager discovers the planet Eden, only visible from Earth every 700 years.
2053 – The first colonists inhabit this second world.
2085 – Life on Earth is decimated by an alien parasite brought from Eden.

2012. Cornwall. Eden Anfield loves puzzles, so when mysterious new boy Ryan Westland shows up at her school, she’s hooked. On the face of it, he’s a typical American teenager. So why doesn’t he recognize pizza? And how come he hasn’t heard of Hitler? What puzzles Eden the most, however, is the interest he’s taking in her.

As Eden falls in love with Ryan, she begins to uncover his secrets. Her breakthrough comes one rainy afternoon when she stumbles across a book in Ryan’s library – a biography of Connor Penrose, her oldest friend, written over 50 years in the future.

Confronting Ryan, she discovers that he is a boy from the future whose mission is to prevent Connor from discovering a planet he names Eden, in honour of the girl he loves. A planet with a deadly virus that is destined to destroy the earth in a hundred years time.

Is it really possible to change the future?

Category: Young Adult

Old Al Haji Amadu had three wives, seven children - and five extremely naughty goggle-eyed goats that munched and gobbled and chewed whatever they could find. One day, enough was enough, they had to go! But getting rid of these troublesome goats proved to be harder than Al Haji could ever have imagined…

Category: Picturebooks

Ever – named, somewhat ironically, after Cinderella’s ‘happily ever after’ – started putting on weight when her mom died. Now she is fifteen years old, weighs 302 pounds, and hears voices.

The voice that whispers in Ever’s ear is the voice of self-doubt and mockery, and it has a name—Skinny.  Skinny’s nasty little whispers tell Ever constantly that she’s ugly, a loser, friendless, and undeserving of love.  Especially the love of Jackson Barnett, who once kissed her in the snow all those years ago and whom she’s adored ever since.

But Ever hears another voice too – her own amazing singing voice that no one knows about even though she’s memorized the lyrics of every musical ever written.  If Ever is willing to take the chance to radically change her body, maybe she might also find the courage to share that voice with the rest of the world.

With the help of her long-suffering science-geek friend Rat, Ever embarks on the risky, terrifying journey of weight loss ulminating in gastric bypass surgery. But while Ever’s body will gradually change on the outside, she soon finds that changing the fat girl on the inside will prove much harder.

Ever dreams of a simple Happy Ever After. But on the long, confusing road to self-reinvention (or self-discovery?), she soon finds that nothing and no one is quite what she thought – least of all herself. Will Ever’s dreams be a case of Never Ever – as she always feared?

Category: Young Adult

‘My name is Cally Louise Fisher and I haven’t spoken for thirty-one days.’

When Cally Fisher sees her dead mother, bright and vivid and real as anything, no-one believes her.  Not her dad who hasn’t been able to say her name since the day she died, not her brother who’s shut in his bedroom aiming for the highest score on Test Drive, and not the rest of her disappointed relatives. Disruptive at school, she’s losing all her friends and if no-one is listening what’s the point in talking?

The only other living soul that sees Cally’s mum is a homeless wolfhound who always seems to be there when her mum appears. But without a voice how will Cally convince anyone that her mum is still with them, and how will she ever persuade her Dad that the huge silver-grey dog is their last link with her? 

Category: Ages 8 - 12

Anna remembers a time before boys, when she was little and everything made sense. When she and her mom were a family, just the two of them against the world. But now her mom’s gone most of the time, chasing the next marriage, the next stepfather. And Anna has learned a new way to make sense of the world. A way to fill her empty afternoons, her empty house. Anna discovers that boys – from Desmond to Joey, from Todd to Sam - can make you feel less alone. 

Everyone at school has heard about Anna and the boys; everyone calls her a slut. Anna’s only friend, Toy, is a girl like her. Toy is a master at using boys, who seems to get everything she wants from them. Anna longs to be Toy, to have Toy’s romantic life, because even when Anna gives boys what they want, she still fails to get what she needs.

When Anna loses Sam, a boy who is more than just useful, a boy so perfect that even Toy could be jealous, she discovers the truth about Toy’s stories – and a truth about herself. That no matter what she barters or gives away, she still has to confront herself – the child inside that’s spent her life yearning for family, belonging and affection. Now, with so much of what she thought true proven to be a lie, Anna finally takes a new look at herself and her life. Could there be a different way of seeing boys? And could she, for the first time, find the strength to take her destiny in her own hands?

Category: Young Adult

In a barren land once known as England, a glimmering, glass pod homes the survivors of the Switch, the period when oxygen levels plunged and the green world withered. A state lottery meant the lucky few won safety inside the pod, while the rest suffocated in the thin air.

Life has moved on and the pod is home. The poor, auxiliary class live their lives quietly. With no money to pay the oxygen tax they aren’t able to run, dance or get out of breath, while the rich Premiums are healthy and strong and govern with a sense of birthright.

The Ministry rule with an iron cosh: those who challenge their order are labeled terrorists and get thrown out the back door and left to smother.
In the outlands a few mysterious drifters live in the ruins dragging along fridge-sized oxygen generators. And there are whispers of a resistance who worship trees and survive god-knows-how.

Sixteen year old Alina fights for freedom. But when a routine mission goes wrong and Alina must flee the pod, she finds herself at the mercy of two seemingly ordinary teenage friends on a weekend trip to the outlands.

ALINA, 16 – tough, heartbroken, and committed to the struggle - she will do anything at all to save the trees.

QUINN, 16 – a privileged Premium with Ministry connections - his closest friend is an auxiliary, but where will his loyalties lie when he’s tested?

BEA, 15 – kind, intuitive, and smart - Quinn holds her heart in his hands but he’s too clueless to see what’s right in front of him.

They have two days of oxygen in their tanks. What happens on the third day?

Category: Young Adult

Fourteen-year-old Lara is being groomed in the family tradition to take over as Count Voronstov’s next kennel steward, breeding borzoi dogs worthy of the Tsar.

But then Lara’s baby brother is born and she finds herself supplanted as her father decides to make the boy the next kennel steward. Going against her father’s wishes and becoming increasingly sure of her special gift of understanding these incredible dogs, Lara risks everything when she reveals the truth about her visions. Now she must save Zar, her favorite borzoi and the one she raised from birth, from a hungry pack of wolves. Only then can she find her own, extraordinary destiny . . .

Category: Ages 8 - 12

Introducing one of the most delightful characters you’ll find in young fiction!

Cody is always ready to help.  She hypnotizes her best friend Spencer’s cat.  She leads the battle against the neighborhood Mean Kids.  She makes sure her teenage big brother Wyatt has the summer of his dreams (sort of.)

In this life there are many mysteries, but brave, tender-hearted Cody is a match for them all.

Black/white line art by Claudio Munoz will complement the funny and charming text.

Category: Ages 5 - 8

Britney Taylor is queen bee at Penford High School. She dates who she likes, rules over her inner circle of friends like Genghis Khan, and can ruin anyone’s life as easily as snapping her perfectly manicured fingers. Just ask the unfortunate few who have crossed her.

For April Bowers, Britney is also the answer to her prayers. With zero friends and nothing close to a boyfriend, April is so absolutely unremarkable no one has even spotted she exists. That is, until Britney notices her. One lunch spent at Britney’s table, and April is basking in the glow of popularity.

But Britney’s friendship comes with a price tag. If April will put her name (or rather, her lipstick) to Britney’s totally unreasonable set of ‘laws’, popularity will be hers for ever more.

What could be simpler? Except that April is about to become a slave to the Lipstick Laws, which deny pretty much all independent or intelligent thought.  Just how much is April willing to pay - and what could happen at payback time?

Category: Young Adult

Ashoka Mistry – better known as Ash – is a 14-year-old Londoner. And he hates India. Which is a problem since his parents have sent him (with little sister Lucky) to spend the summer with family in Varanasi. It seems like a dream come true when mysterious Lord Savage offers Ash’s uncle the job opportunity of a lifetime, deciphering some ancient scrolls – and hands over a cheque for £2 million in advance. But Ash already knows something is very wrong at Savage Palace and that the aristocrat’s sinister henchmen are not quite what they seem. After all, do bodyguards generally sprout claws and fangs - or have a nasty habit of transforming into massive crocodiles? These guys are rakshashas – aka demons – and the Mistry family is in deep trouble.

Ash wants to believe all will be fine - the imagination can play strange tricks, right? But when he falls into an unexcavated hole in the desert, hurting his hand on a ancient, golden arrowhead, Ash begins to realize the stakes are even higher than he thought. Touched now by Kali, the goddess of death (whose arrow it is), and with his relatives murdered, Ash finds himself in a desperate battle to stop Savage’s masterplan – the opening of the legendary Iron Gates that have kept Ravanna, the demon king, at bay for four millennia. With Parvati – a beautiful demon cobra-girl who just happens to be Ravanna’s daughter (she never did get on with her dad) – by his side, Ash’s journey will not only take him into the heart of darkness, but also on a quest to understand his own identity and the hero within himself. 

Category: Ages 8 - 12

Necessity Bonehill is arrogant, a bully and trapped in Rookery Heights Academy for Young Ladies. Bored and aimless, she spends her time training with the retired, and slightly insane, Sergeant Major Morris or fighting with the local peasant boys.  So when her Uncle Carlos sends her a seemingly empty bottle with the instructions, “Never open it,” she can’t resist the temptation and pulls the cork.

But Necessity unleashes an evil genie, a demon of pestilence and a creature that bears her parents a terrible grudge. With only seven days to rescue them, Ness has to find out how to kill the genie. She begins a desperate quest that takes her through the dark streets of London and to the Oasis of the Amarant in uncharted Africa. If she fails, her parents die and the world will fall prey to the genie’s hideous plague. Her nightmare magic-carpet ride brings her face to face with the Pestilents, the genie’s living dead servants, a vampire army and worst of all…herself.

The Arabian Nights viewed through a murky gothic lens with a fist-fighting girl for company!

Category: Ages 8 - 12

A story about first love, bullying and inner strength.

Armed with one suitcase and an old laundry bag filled with clothes, Kasienka and her mother leave Poland and head for the UK to find her missing father.

Life is lonely for Kasienka. At home, her mother’s heart is breaking and at school she finds it impossible to make new friends.

While the search continues, Kasienka is kept afloat by William, a boy she meets at the pool, who understands what it means to lose someone and who swims with Kasienka towards her new life.

Category: Ages 8 - 12

Miss Stunkel’s third-grade art class is Penelope Crumb’s All-Time Favorite subject. She loves drawing pictures, especially when they’re of her best friend, Patsy Cline Roberta Watson.  But Penelope gets a horrible shock when Patsy draws a picture of HER – with a great big nose.  Good gravy, that thing is enormous!

It wouldn’t be so bad if Penelope wasn’t the last person in the universe to notice the size of her nose. But an even greater shock is in store when her mom tells Penelope that she has the famous Crumb protuberance – not the nose of her father, who’s been Graveyard Dead since Penelope was a baby (leaving her with nothing except a red metal toolbox, a shoe horn and a few old photos), but the nose of Grandpa Felix – who Penelope had never even known was still alive.

With some help from Littie Maple across the way, and a lot of hindrance from her brother Terrible the Alien, Penelope resolves to sniff out the truth about that enormous thing in the middle of her face – and also the mystery surrounding her missing grandpa. Could it be that the Crumb nose has special powers – super powers? And is it possible that her nose is big enough to bring a family back together?

Category: Ages 8 - 12

2059.  The snow begins to fall. Only the few are prepared. A new ice-age has begun.

Born after the snows, fifteen-year-old straggler kid Willo Blake has never known a life outside hunting and trapping in the hills.  When his family mysteriously disappears, leaving him alone on a freezing mountain, Willo sets off into the unknown to find them.

Meanwhile, across Britain, outlawed followers of survivalist John Blovyn are planning an escape to the fabled Islands talked of in a revolutionary book.

When Willo meets an abandoned girl on his trek across the hills, his world collides with outlaws and halfmen on an epic journey that leads him to the new world of the city - a place where the dog spirit inside his head cannot help him.

It is a journey of betrayal and violence. A journey of awakening love and humanity. A journey that changes everything he ever thought he knew.

Category: Young Adult

4 SALE BY OWNER.  Mo knows how much it means to her father to sell their house, but deep inside she hopes they’ll stay on Fox Street 4 EVER. But that changes on New Year’s Day, when a young couple with a baby girl see the Wrens’ house and know it’s the perfect place to raise their family.

MO WREN LOST AND FOUND follows Mo, Dottie and their father across the river to a new neighborhood where the streets are crowded and confusing.  “Where Fox Street began and ended was perfectly clear.  Once upon a time and The End.  But East 213th was more like To be continued...with those three dots that meant anything might happen.” While Dottie immediately makes friends, and acquires a pet lizard named Handsome, things are much tougher for Mo.  The one friend she does make informs her that the place they’ve bought has a curse on it.  No business ever succeeds there.  No matter how hard Mr. Wren works, The Wren House refuses to shape up, and their money is running out at an alarming rate.

In WHAT HAPPENED ON FOX STREET, Mo was on the cusp of change; now she’s in the very middle of it. But the safety and security she longs for elude her again and again, until the night of a freak spring snowstorm, when Mo makes a decision that helps the Wrens to find a true nest at last.

Category: Ages 8 - 12

Sylvia Bell, better known as Vee, hates that she has narcolepsy, just like her mother did. But collapsing at school – however embarrassingly – is nowhere near as bad as the real truth. That when Vee passes out she actually slides randomly into other’s people’s heads and ends up seeing things she really doesn’t want to. That’s how she knew Ms Gomez, the Spanish teacher, came on to her Psych teacher Mr Goldsmith in the paper closet. And how Vee witnessed her younger sister, Mattie, plotting to torture her friend Sophie by text message. But when Vee finds herself in the head of a killer, standing over Sophie’s slashed and murdered body, she’s beyond freaked.

Only Vee knows that Sophie didn’t kill herself. And when another cheerleader turns up dead, Vee realizes that someone is picking off Mattie’s friends and making it look like suicide. Suddenly everyone is a suspect, and Sylvia is terrified that Mattie might be next. Struggling to understand and control her bizarre and lonely illness (or gift?), Vee finds herself enmeshed in a terrifying web of secrets, lies and danger. Now the past has come back to haunt the present, and as Vee deals once more with her mother’s death so many years before, and tries to work out the real meaning of love and courage, she must face up to the fact that she can trust no one – not even the family and friends she thought she knew.

Category: Young Adult

Being the youngest daughter of the Devil has never been easy. Daphne’s father has no time for her, her mother, no interest, and her status in the upper echelon separates her from the working-class demons that populate Lucifer’s metropolis.

When her brother and only confidante goes missing, life in the restrictive city of Pandemonium becomes intolerable. Now, in an attempt to find him, Daphne sets out for Earth—and finds it larger and more chaotic than she imagined, a dazzling expanse of noise, dirt, and random violence.  Despite her bewilderment, she navigates the mortal world with growing fascination, gaining an ally when she saves a dying boy from her father’s minions. 

For Truman Flynn, the last year has been one long downward spiral, but when Daphne arrives just in time to save his life, he finds himself unexpectedly glad to have another chance. Together, Daphne and Truman go in search of her brother, braving the hazards of Las Vegas and the perils of first love, even as it becomes increasingly clear that her brother might have had a secret and compelling reason for leaving.

Lucifer’s agents aren’t the only creatures on the prowl, and Daphne soon finds herself the target of a plan to rid the world of demons for good. Now she must evade a demon-eating monster, rescue her brother from an angelic zealot, and save the boy she loves from his greatest enemy—himself.

“It takes moxie to set the first act of your novel in Hell, but Yovanoff does just that, and with a confidence that suggests she might have taken a vacation there at some point . . . this is a breath of fresh (or fetid?) air for the genre.” --BOOKLIST review, October 2011

Category: Young Adult

When Brianna was in eighth grade she did something so dreadful she was suspended and home-schooled. No one could ever explain exactly what happened that night – or why it happened. Except Brie’s Irish grandmother, who afterwards gave her a silver charm bracelet, ancient and beautiful, telling her she must always wear it until she turns seventeen. Ever since then, it’s like Brie’s been invisible. Guys – and most girls too – stare right past her as if she hardly exists. And that includes Blake, the one boy she can’t take her eyes off despite the fifty-seven times he’s ignored her.

But then there’s a night that changes everything – the night when Blake suddenly notices Brianna and time stops in one frozen, silver moment. What is Brie’s connection to Blake and his dangerously hot family? As Brie discovers her wild Irish heritage, the invisibility she’s spent her life resenting becomes her one place of safety.  Because now she will learn the truth about the mysterious bracelet and the nickname her grandmother gave her so many years ago . . . . Bandia.

For Brianna, the Seventh Daughter, the Irish Bandia of myth, is about to turn seventeen . . . .

Category: Young Adult

At sixteen, Berry Fields knows everything she needs to know about love. It sucks. As an employee for her dad’s private investigation company, she’s seen it firsthand. Men lie, cheat, leave. Even Berry’s dad is love’s victim, having never fully recovered from the death of his wife eight years earlier.

When Tanner Halston transfers to McHenry High, Berry is not impressed. She knows the type - good looking and full of himself. And it doesn’t help that Tanner always seems to catch her at her worst moments. But when Berry’s best friend hits it off with Tanner’s brother, it becomes impossible to avoid Tanner.

Spurred by a charming boy who seems to want to help her, Berry embarks on her own investigation into her mother’s death. As she gets drawn deeper into a web of lies, she finds herself fighting against everything she thought she knew, about her mother, herself, and her growing attraction to Tanner Halston . . .

Category: Young Adult

From flesh-eating faeries and demons in love to unearthly magicians and alternate histories, a collection of mesmerizing stories from three extraordinarily imaginative authors - Maggie Stiefvater, Brenna Yovanoff and Tessa Gratton.

Maggie Stiefvater is the New York Times best-selling author of SHIVER, Brenna Yovanoff’s THE REPLACEMENT published in Fall 2010 (Razorbill) and was one of Booklist’s Top 10 picks of ‘the best debut novels for youth published in the last year’ and picked up two starred reviews pre-publication. THE SPACE BETWEEN followed in Fall 2011 to rave reviews. Tessa Gratton’s BLOOD MAGIC published as a major lead title in Fall 2011 (Random House).

The stories are taken from the Sisters’ popular blog, The Merry Sisters of Fate (http://community.livejournal.com/merry_fates) but also includes one original story from each author as well as doodles and conversations (whether email, Twitter, or IM) about the process of writing and where the stories come from.

Category: Young Adult

A hilarious, cringe-inducing, tender and warm debut in the tradition of Louise Rennison

Gwynnie knows all about boys, she’s been playing football with them all her life. But suddenly the game has changed: a smart, handsome Year 10 called Charlie Notts has arrived and Gwynnie has no idea how to go from friend to girlfriend.

Enlisting the help of Jennifer Gregson, the girliest girl in school, Gwynnie tries to make the transformation from tomboy to top model. But being a girl is more difficult that mastering the off-side rule.

Category: Ages 8 - 12

Edgy Taylor doesn’t have the best job in the world; he collects dog droppings from the streets of Victorian London to sell to the tanneries. But things are set to get even tougher for Edgy when a dying errand boy hands him a map carved into a sliver of skull.

Rescued by the mysterious Professor Envry Janus, Edgy is catapulted into the arcane world of the Royal Society of Daemonologie where demons are collected, catalogued and turned to stone. Intrigue and murder stalk the dusty corridors of the Society and satanic forces manipulate its members. With Spinorix the imp and Sally, a revenant girl who has been dead since 1735, Edgy discovers a race between Janus and the demon-queen Salome to find the body of arch-demon Moloch. Janus must stop Salome from returning Moloch’s heart to its rightful owner and awakening him.

But Janus is not all he seems, and neither, it would appear, is Edgy. Now it’s a race to save the world that will take them all to the caves of the frozen North – and the truth about where Moloch’s heart really lies, and who wants the demon lord to awaken.

Category: Ages 8 - 12

Since mankind began, civilizations have always fallen: the Romans, the Greeks, the Aztecs…. Now it’s our turn.

Huge earthquakes rock the world. Cities are destroyed. But something even worse is happening. An ancient evil has been unleashed, hooking on to weakness, turning the unwary into hunters, killers, crazies.

Mason:  His mother is dying after a terrible car accident. As he endures a last vigil at her hospital bed, his school is bombed and razed to the ground. Everyone he knows is killed.

Aries: A school bus, an aftershock and a crash. Pulled out of the wreckage by a mysterious stranger, she’s about to discover a world changed forever.

Clementine: An emergency meeting at the town hall that descends into murderous chaos. Outside the rest of their community encircle with weapons. How can those you trust turn into savage strangers?

Michael: A brutal road rage incident. When the police arrive on the scene they gun down the guilty and turn on the by-standing crowd. Where do you go for justice when even the lawmakers have turned bad?

Category: Young Adult

The summer after high-school graduation, a year after her mother’s tragic death, and Anna has no plans – beyond her need to put a lot of miles between herself and the past.  With forever friend Kat, a battered copy of Kerouac’s DHARMA BUMS, and a car with a dodgy oil filter, the girls set out on an epic road trip across the USA.  Maybe somewhere along the way they’ll prove or disprove the existence of God. Maybe they’ll even get laid . . .

It’s a journey both outward and inward. Through the Badlands and encounters with predatory men and buffalo. A crazy bus ride to Mexico with a bunch of hymn-singing missionaries. Facing death, naked in the forest with an enraged grizzly bear . . . Gradually, Anna realizes that this is a voyage of discovery into her own self, her own silent pain – and into the tangled history that she and Kat share. What is love? What is sexual identity? And how do you find a way forward into a new future – a way to declare openly and without fear all that lies within you?

“An enormously engaging, exquisitely written, laugh-out-loud funny, original story that transcends coming out to finding yourself and the true meaning of love. Read this novel, recommend it to your friends. . .”
-- Julie Ann Peters, author of LUNA

Category: Young Adult

Gidaado the Fourth and his albino camel are working for a famous General in his campaign to win the state elections.

General Crepe-Sombo is everyone’s hero, but Sophie reckons there is something fishy about him. She must do some dangerous spying to find out the truth.

It turns out that the General is more crooked than Sophie and Gidaado could ever have imagined. They must expose him before he becomes President!

In a final breathtaking scene, the children are racing across the desert sands on camelback, pursued by General Crepe-Sombo in his jeep. Who will prevail? 

Category: Ages 5 - 8

Sophie and Gidaado are back and this time the enemy is more dangerous than camel thief Moussa ag Litni.

Locusts with their crop-devouring mandibles threaten the livelihood of the entire Oudalan Province. Gidaado is forced to become a crier announcing local news and the descriptions of missing cows.

With Sophie’s help, Gidaado’s announcements become great hits! Who could resist Gidaado’s crooning “Has anybody seen my Skinny Legs?”

Category: Ages 5 - 8

Sophie lives in Gorom-Gorom, with her carnivorous-plant obsessed dad.

Despite living there for two years and speaking the local language, Sophie finds it difficult to make friends. So when she meets Gidaado, a young griot (story-teller), she agrees to join him and his albino camel, Chobbal, on a journey to his village.

It is not until they have set off, that Sophie begins to realise just how dangerous the desert is - it’s full of djinnis that creep up behind you, and jump on your head and make you go mad. Not to mention the infamous Moussa ag Litni, a ruthless bandit who steals camels…

Category: Ages 5 - 8

Long ago in the ancient city of Timbuktu a student pulled off the most daring heist in African history, the theft of 100 million pounds worth of gold.

The stolen treasure has remained hidden until now, when teenage hacker Danny Temple discovers a cryptic Arabic manuscript. It’s a good job that Danny is a keen traceur (free runner) because he has to run across rooftops and leap from buildings to stay one step ahead of his pursuers.

His nightmarish and adrenalin-charged quest leads him all the way to sub-Saharan Africa, and the mysterious cliffs of Bandiagara. 

Category: Ages 8 - 12

‘Get back on the bus!’ One of the policemen was walking towards them holding his pistol. Haroun flicked on his helmet-lamp and peered in through the window of the car. Claude Gerard was dead! When the Director of the Saharan uranium mine where he works is mysteriously murdered, fourteen year-old Haroun embarks on a dangerous new role as a spy in the service of the French Government. A shocking conspiracy is unearthed - somebody is trafficking ‘yellowcake’, a key ingredient in the production of nuclear bombs. Faced with the threat of the yellowcake falling into the hands of a rogue state, time is running out…

Category: Ages 8 - 12

Spectacular. Bathsheba is back - and off to Dramarama Camp!

Bathsheba can’t wait to go to camp with her best friend Keisha. But when Keisha’s granny falls ill, Bathsheba has to go by herself.

Luckily, lovable Bath soon makes friends, and uses her budding talent to fight off stiff competition from an ambitious camp clique of returning pupils - landing a starring role in the final cabaret! But when Dramarama Camp’s director breaks her leg, the special guest-tutor, Hollywood starlet Avocado Dieppe (and Bath’s arch-nemesis!) turns directorial diva and steals Bath’s role in the show! It looks like Bath’s chances of fame are doomed - until a disaster of dramatic proportions gives our heroine a chance to truly shine…

Join Bathsheba for another deliciously funny and fantastic instalment of this addictive diary series. 

Category: Ages 8 - 12

Bathsheba’s back!

Bathsheba Clarice de Trop is going to school for the first time in her life. The daughter of a world-famous novelist, she has had a pampered, home-tutored - and pretty lonely - lifestyle, till now. But her larger-than-life personality means it’s not that easy for her to fit in. After all, she’s known as the heroine of all her mother’s exciting books - and she has to live up to her name.

And so she embarks on an investigation to catch the thief of the school computers - and hopefully win herself some friends into the bargain. Girls will love the hilarious world of Bathsheba, from her glamorous tall tales to those touching home truths. 

Category: Ages 8 - 12

Bathsheba Clarice de Trop thinks she’s a star. Well, her mum is a world-famous novelist whose books are all about the amazing adventures of her fabulous daughter, and of course the stories must be true.

But when Bathsheba is confronted by her down-and-out father, and discovers that her role in the fantastic new Bathsheba film will be played by hot US actress Avocado Dieppe, she has to face reality. She might not be as famous as she liked to think, but maybe she can still be a star in her own right.

Category: Ages 8 - 12

It’s the New Year, Woodbridge School is closed and the country is snowed in. While the blizzards rage and Nell’s mum works double shifts, their house is full of Gwen’s friends permanently crashing out on every bed and sofa.  The Elven world is frozen, too.  It’s deep in snow and ice storms are ravaging the forest.  Worst of all the massive Harps that keep the Elven land twisted out of sight are falling silent.  No music, no land. 

Can Nell and Evan cross the deadly frozen lake that surrounds their land, and fight through freezing blizzards?  And if they do reach the Harp will they be able to overcome the two enemies waiting for them - Loki and Laki Winter?  They are feared Ice Elven, a race so secretive that most young Elven think they’re myths used to scare them into being good.  The scheming Winter twins are all too real, though, and they’ll stop at nothing to make sure the Harps stay silent. 

Category: Ages 8 - 12

Midnight: a mist-haunted wood with a bad reputation. A sweet sixteen party, and 13 year old Nell is trying to keep her sister, spoilt birthday-girl Gwen, out of trouble.  No chance. Trouble finds Gwen and drags her through the mist. Only Nell guesses who’s behind the kidnap - the boy she hoped was her friend, the cute but mysterious Evan River.

All those fairy stories Nell’s grandmother told her about girls being stolen by fairy folk are true. The Elven are beautiful as starlight, fierce as wolves, and cold as ice. And they want their world back. The fight has been raging for centuries. Nell’s grandmother should know, she’s a Watcher, the ones responsible for imprisoning the Elven in isolated iron-bound camps in Siberia. Only Evan, his fanatical older brother Fen, and a handful of Elven children are still free. 

Fen, hellbent on revenge, keeps Gwen in their wolf-guarded stronghold deep in the mist. The price for her safe return? The release of all the Elven – but the Watchers will never agree. Only Nell can save Gwen.

Time is twisted through the mist: if Nell stops longer than a night and day, a hundred years will hit her as soon as she returns and she’ll be old and withered before she’s even lived. The clock is ticking.

Category: Ages 8 - 12

When Delaney Maxwell is pulled out of the icy waters of a Maine lake by her best friend Decker Tom, she is blue and her heart isn’t beating. Everyone know she’s dead. So how could she defy medical precedent and come back – well enough after a few days to look at scans of her own damaged brain. Is she a miracle, a freak of nature – or something much more frightening?

Everyone wants Delaney to be fine, but she knows she’s very far from normal. Pulled by sensations she can’t control, Delaney finds herself drawn to the dying. Is her crazy brain predicting death or causing it? Either way, she has knowledge that no normal human being should ever have, and that knowledge is going to kill her.

Then Delaney meets Troy Varga.  Older, assured and sympathetic, Troy lost his whole family in a car crash and emerged from a coma with the same intuitions as Delaney. At last she’s found a kindred spirit who’ll understand the hell she’s going through. But Delaney soon discovers that Troy’s motives aren’t quite what she thought. Who should decide when suffering is too much? Is taking the life of a dying person kind or evil?

Delaney Maxwell is alive, but death won’t be cheated for long. Can she escape that destiny – and can heaven possibly come from the hell that was Falcon Lake?  The answer can only lie in one place - love.

Category: Young Adult

After discovering her father’s big Multiple Sclerosis secret, Payton Gritas’s structured life crumbles. So begin her excruciating ‘chats’ with Ms Callahan, a school counselor aiming to save Payton from drowning in denial by encouraging her to write Focus Exercises on any random object. Payton chooses Sean Griswold, her alphabetical connection since kindergarten. More specifically, she chooses his somewhat over-sized head.

As Payton’s research grows into something a little less scientific and a little more crush-like, it spawns more and more questions about Sean and his dome. Like what’s with the scar?  And why is a fifteen year old training to be the next Lance Armstrong? Payton finds answers to these questions by getting inside Sean’s head, while Sean somehow finds a way into her guarded heart. But when Payton realizes her Sean obsession won’t ultimately mend her battered relationship with her dad, she must shift her focus to the one person who can find the way forward - herself.

Category: Young Adult

Fiona Finkelstein’s life is always a bit like a TV show. Everywhere she goes, there’s a lot of drama. That’s what being 9 years old in Ordinary, Maryland, is like when your dad is chief meteorologist for the local TV station, your mom lives in California and stars in a soap opera, and your little brother thinks he’s a superhero.

Fiona’s world is set to become even more dramatic when new boy Milo Bridgewater joins her fourth-grade class at Ordinary Elementary. Milo seems to be the very opposite of ordinary, and when his popularity and interest in starting a school meteorology club threaten to overshadow Fiona, she starts her own series of clubs - including one especially for matchmaking - in an attempt to outdo him. 

Category: Ages 8 - 12

Sometimes Fiona Finkelstein’s life seems to be a lot like a TV show - everywhere she goes, there’s a lot of drama. But that’s what being 9 years old in Ordinary, Maryland, is like when your dad is the chief meteorologist for the local TV station, your mom lives in California and stars in a soap opera, and your little brother thinks he’s a superhero.

Right now life is even better than TV, because Fiona has a chance to live her dream and become a big-time ballerina. There’s just one problem: In her last recital, Fiona starred as the unforgettable Fiona VOMETstein - all over the stage, and all over Benevolence Castle’s can-can costume.

Can Fiona overcome her fears and star in a production of The Nutcracker? Or she will remain the only one in her family who has the worst case of stage fright ever? 

Category: Ages 8 - 12

Frank Marder is a head, paralyzed from the neck down, and it’s his fault.  He was drinking.  He was driving.  Now Frank can’t walk, he can’t move, he can’t feel his skin.  He needs someone to feed him, to wash him, to move his body.

But if you ask most of the people who are posting on www.quadkingonthenet, he hasn’t been adequately punished.  Two people are dead because of him.  Frank should go to jail.  Only “Anonymous” disagrees.

Category: Young Adult

Xanthe Fox is hexed by the letter X. Ever since she can remember, the dreaded letter has caused her nothing but trouble. But when Xanthe arrives at her new school, things go from bad to worse.  Now it’s impossible even to read a book or eat alphabet spaghetti without chaotic results - and then she accidently hexes her best friend, Monday Jones, and makes her disappear!

When she finds a hidden copy of her family tree, Xanthe starts to uncover the truth - that she’s a descendant of the True Witches and must make a terrible decision.  If she accepts the ancient Turning Lock she will come fully into her powers and be able to rescue Monday. But if she refuses, and turns her back on her witchy heritage, then her best friend will be lost forever. And to make matters worse, a secret and terrifying enemy is on her trail . . . .

Category: Ages 8 - 12

Contemporary, and with a very special charm, this is the story of Phoebe’s trip to the park with her new digger toy. Mom and baby can be quite annoying at times, so Phoebe can’t wait to put just a little distance between herself and them. But then along comes a big mean girl - and suddenly Phoebe realizes that there’s nothing like the warmth and safety of family when you really need it.
Illustrator - to be confirmed.

Category: Picturebooks

Elinor Smith was born to soar. Plucky Elinor Smith was six years old when she first went for a ride in a rickety “flying machine.” At ten, she was taking flying lessons with blocks strapped to the rudder bar so her feet could reach it! By the time she was seventeen, she had become the youngest licensed pilot in the United States, male or female, and earned the respect of famous pilots like Charles Lindbergh.

When male pilots mocked her, Elinor decided to perform an aerial maneuver they thought was impossible. It would take training and preparation. But this aviation pioneer was determined to show that with talent, hard work, and plenty of grit a girl could climb to any heights.

Category: Picturebooks

Fifteen-year-old Angie didn’t used to think too much about God – until things started getting weird.  Like the statue of St Felix, her secret confidante, suddenly coming off his plinth and talking back at her. Like Angie’s mom, about to bust up her third marriage for no apparent reason. And weirdest of all, Jessie Francis, home from Afghanistan with his leg blown off and expected to fit back in at school. Does any of it make sense or is life always going to be as scrambled as the crazy peace sticker Angie sees from the ‘Untied Church of Dog’?

Against the advice of an increasingly vocal St Felix (who knows a thing or two about war), Angie finds herself falling for Jessie’s allure - a guy who’s been through so much more than regular high-school kids. But Jessie is battling some major demons, and as Angie starts losing control of the situation, she has to ask - can one person ever make things right for someone else?

Category: Young Adult

Based on actual events, this is the fascinating and uplifting story of two very different girls, whose lives briefly intersected in 1940’s California.

Sylvia was Hispanic. Aki was Japanese. Both families became caught up in the turmoil of war, and the changing nature of society. Sylvia was barred from a local school and a decent education - the victim of nothing more than her heritage and the colour of her skin. Aki’s family found itself in an internment camp, deprived of liberty in the country they thought was their home.

The two girls’ stories could hardly be more different - and yet they both faced injustice and hardship, sharing in the pain of their families.

When Sylvia’s father decided to take action and begin a fight for justice, he could not have anticipated the importance of the outcome: a landmark lawsuit that would help to shift attitudes about the education of children. And as events played out, the lives of these two young girls were destined to meet for just a few short moments . . .

Category: Ages 8 - 12

Desi Bascomb’s job as a princess substitute has gotten a whole lot more glamorous now that she’s advanced to Level 2 within the Facade Agency. Magical make-up, roller-skating celebrities, and the chance to see Prince Karl again are just some of the major perks. Not to mention, she’s landed the role of Fairy Queen in her school’s production of Midsummer’s Night Dream (opposite her best friend’s crush. Which is a little weird, but at least he wears a donkey head during their kissing scene). Life should be perfect, but Desi can’t seem to shake the feeling that there is more going on with the agency’s magic than she’s told. Like why is this mind-bending power exclusive to royals? Is it possible that there could be a bigger way to make an impact in both parts of her life? 

Category: Ages 8 - 12