Synopsis: Everyone in Kinvara is conscious that time is flying past, faster and faster - to such an extent that when JJ asks his mother what she would like as a birthday present she ask for more time. JJ dismisses this as mere wishful thinking, an impossibility, for who know where the time goes? The Liddys have been musicians for generations and JJ is no exception but what he discovers ...

Synopsis: Donnie: 'I think back on things that happened. And I think about how if you were to tell stories about us, about our family, you might raise up your eyebrows and you might say, 'Well, no wonder.' I bet you think you could pinpoint where it started for her. It's easy to think that, when you can look back as something as a whole. But when you're living it, da ...

Synopsis: Like any girl, sixteen-year-old Chanda Kebelo has secrets. She is determined to be loyal to her rebellious friend Esther, she worries about passing her exams, and she wishes she didn't have to spend so much time listening to her Mama chat with their nosy neighbour Mrs Tafa. But one secret threatens to silence everything. All around her people are dying and everyone is afra ...

Synopsis: Spindle's End is a retelling of the fairy tale, "The Sleeping Beauty", which takes the reader into a magical world filled with modern characters who encounter adventure, love and loss. The curse placed on Rosie at her christening will hunt her down through the years.

Review: Spindle’s End has its origins in Perrault’s f ...

Synopsis: 'Roxy was shaking with fear. She drew in a deep breath. She would not let her fear take over. She couldn't. She had too much to lose. She had to be strong, to be brave. For once in her life she had to think of someone other than herself.' Roxy is wild, uncontrollable. She hates her parents - and her goody-two-shoes sister. Her only solace is her equally wild friend ...

Synopsis: Brook High is a great grey concrete ants' nest of a school. John Malarkey is the new kid, thrown in at the deep end of Year 11. He's the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time. Through what at first appears to be a random meeting, he helps a girl called Mary Chase out of tricky situation, but is subsequently accused of stealing report cards to sell to studen ...

Synopsis:Cyrano de Bergerac is a flamboyant character and a skilled swordsman, not in the least afraid of drawing attention to himself in public - for he can be highly amusing, even at his own expense, with jokes about his enormous nose. But he has a weakness: he has fallen in love with his beautiful cousin Roxane, and because of his own appearance is too ashamed to declare his love. Me ...

Synopsis: In 1950s Punjab, a secret affair goes terribly wrong and the bride commits suicide after her lover is attacked by her family. The two families part in violence and conflict. In Leicester in 2004, Rani and Sukh fall in love, unaware of the terrible legacy of the past and the conflict between their families.

Review: Although this book is set in Leicester 2004 and c ...

Synopsis:Jack Gantos, bestselling author of the Joey Pigza books, had a peripatetic childhood around the US and the Caribbean. At 18 years old, he was doing a dead-end job on a Caribbean island, looking for adventure and a way to fund himself through university. When he was offered $10,000 to sail a boatload of drugs to New York, he jumped at it. It resulted in a year in a federal priso ...

Synopsis: Paul Faustino, South America’s top sports journalist, is supposed to be on leave, but the disappearance of football prodigy ‘El Brujito’ and the death of a colleague draw him into a case of corruption, murder and ancient magic. What seems to be a simple ransom demand becomes complicated when Faustino learns that El Brujito walked away from the stadium quite un ...