Berlie Doherty - Street Child
Fiction 9+
208 pages
When his mother dies, Jim Jarvis is left all alone in London. He is sent to the workhouse but quickly escapes, choosing a hard life on the streets of the city over the confines of the workhouse walls. Struggling to survive, Jim finally finds some friends. only to be snatched away and made to work for the remorselessly cruel Grimy Nick, constantly guarded by his vicious dog, Snipe. Will Jim ever manage to be free?
Siobhan Dowd - The London Eye Mystery
Fiction 9+
322 pages
When Ted and Kat watched their cousin Salim get on board the London Eye, he turned and waved before getting on. But after half an hour it landed and everyone trooped off - but no Salim. Where could he have gone? How on earth could he have disappeared into thin air?
Catherine Doyle - The Storm Keeper’s Island
Fiction 9+
299 pages
Fionn Boyle and his older sister Tara have been sent to stay with their grandfather on the remote island of Arranmore for the summer. Though Fionn has never met his grandfather before - an eccentric old man who lives in a tiny cottage filled to the brim with candles - he knows he comes from a long line of brave lifeboat men, who wear the sea behind their eyes.
Fionn is scared of the sea. He has no interest in adventure or shipwrecks or the restless wind that rustles through the island, as though in search of something. But an old magic is stirring deep inside the layers of Arranmore, and it is calling out to Fionn.
Sarah Driver - Once We Were Witches
Fiction 9+
368 pages
13 years ago, magic was banished and the witches were hunted. Sisters Spel and Egg are the daughters of witches, but they grow up in Miss Mouldheel's School for Wicked Girls with no idea who they really are. Until the day the message arrives telling them to run.
The message sends them to a funeral parlour in a far away village - and their new guardian, the Undertaker, has a secret. Beneath the funeral parlour is a portal to the Other Ways - four worlds that lie parallel to ours. When Egg vanishes through the portal, Spel knows she must try to save her sister.