When Rachel's mother becomes seriously ill with cancer, Rachel faces turmoil. She is in her GCSE year and has a starring role in the school play. Her family is fraught with tensions, her little brother lost and needy and her friendships a problem. The book explores how she faces these challenges and earns her mother's name for her - Miracle Girl.

Miracle Girl is an immensely read ...

Alissa ends up at the bottom of a crypt, and whilst Evelin dashes for help Alissa stumbles across something very strange – a child’s body in a coffin which has a large plant sprouting out of it. The plant sets off an entire series of strange events which follow her and Evelin, threatening their friendship and in the end even their lives…

A wonderful (if occasionally ...

Synopsis: Leaving behind his farming family, Sam Gilburne wants to enter the acting profession, a vocation that is seen as inferior by the more elite members of English society at the time. Once working as an apprentice in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, Sam is frustrated by always playing the shorter, less pretty girls whilst his best friend, the effeminate and possibly homosexual Wil ...

Swallowing the Sun tells the story of the impact of Hurricane Mitch on the people of Honduras in October 1998 through the eyes of 13-year old Jose Cruz. At first Jose talks about many of his dreams and nightmares, as his waking world seems unreal, a mudslide destroying most of the houses in his small village, and killing more than half of the inhabitants. But with his father and older ...

This debut novel, drawing imaginatively on the author's own experiences of parenting a son who has been diagnosed as being 'profoundly developmentally disabled', is a moving and ambitious attempt to explore perspectives on what it means to be severely physically impaired in our society. It raises a host of challenging and important issues in an admirably non-judgemental, sympathetic fa ...

Alex Shearer has written material for adults and younger readers, in various genres. His latest is a complex book which addresses a number of issues about the nature of love, and the power of one individual over another.

Encased in a first-person narrative, the story is presented as a fictionized account of real events in his own childhood written by Christopher Mallan, a young scientist ...

Melinda called the cops at a secret party that she should never have attended. Now she is shunned by her oldest friends, and has to come to terms with being a voiceless outsider … she has so much to say … and can’t.

An emotional rollercoaster ride that harks back to the torments of high-school, Laurie Anderson has created a masterpiece in cutting edge psychological tr ...

This is a red-hot special: sharp, original, funny YA fiction exploring the secret life of 15 diverse young people working in a supermarket.

This is a smashing easy read for mid-teens: well written, funny and credible. More like a literary soap opera than a novel, ‘Shelf Life’ zooms in on the culturally diverse lives of teenagers working in a supermarket, exposing what the secu ...

Playing With Fire is Henning Mankell's second novel about Sofia, a friend of his, who lost her legs when she trod on a mine at the age of ten. Sofia takes in sewing, to augment the income her mother gets from selling the vegetables she grows on the village fields. But Sofia also desires a life of her own: her own man, her own career, and her own f ...

Whilst Emilia’s mother worked sweeping the square in front of the president’s palace in Bucharest, Emilia spent her childhood days drawing in the dust and mud, when she should have been helping out. Emilia’s talent for drawing is what made her different. Gypsies did not go to school. Gypsies did not draw.

After a bout of persecution against gypsies in Bucharest, Emilia ...