The Miraculous Sweetmakers

 By: Natasha Hastings  

Location: FIC HAS

Genre: Fantasy

A bewitching and powerful tale of sparkling magic, spellbinding mystery and a friendship worth risking everything for, perfect for fans of Tamzin Merchant, Abi Elphinstone and Anna James. Thomasina and Anne are looking for adventure when their friend, Henry, disappears – snatched by a mysterious creature, and dragged into the depths of the River Thames. Determined to save him, the girls venture into the deep, and discover the enchanting Free Waters: a vast, glittering underwater city, home to mermaids and sirens. But the Free Waters are threatened by an evil Sea Queen. It is she who has Henry – and the girls must complete three treacherous and impossible magical tasks if they are to save his life … An unputdownable and exciting new tale from the bestselling author of The Miraculous Sweetmakers: The Frost Fair.

The Last Word

 By: Patricia Forde  

Location: FIC FOR

Genre: Dystopia

A world devastated by climate change. A society ruled by fear. And a girl brave enough to take a stand.

Now an outlaw, Letta's world is more dangerous than ever. The new ruler of Ark has limited language to under five hundred words and there are terrible whispers of babies disappearing in the night.
Letta devotes herself to keeping language alive, teaching in secret illegal schools, but at great risk. And when disaster strikes, she takes the blame. Haunted by grief and hunted by gavvers, she and Marlo are forced to flee, in the process discovering the terrible plan to wipe out language for good.

I was a Teenager Slasher

 By: Stephen Graham Jones

Location: FIC GRA

Genre: Horror

1989, Lamesa, Texas. A community driven by oil and cotton – a town where everyone knows everyone else’s business.

Tolly Driver, seventeen, a good kid with more potential than application, exists on the outskirts with his best friend, Amber. They navigate the hellscape of the teenage social scene, sticking together in a place that doesn’t know how to be different.

But when they go to a fateful party at Deek Masterton’s house – a party that ends in a series of gruesome, brutal and extravagant murders – Tolly’s world gets flipped upside-down. Because some slashers are born in violence and retribution, some were born that way – and some were just in the wrong place, at the wrong time…

Review by Esta

Trigger warnings abound—Extreme gore, blood, murder, bullying, suicide contemplation, animal deaths and more—so be aware and mind your triggers.

Ultimately, this book is a humorous, heartfelt, and surprisingly poignant love letter to the slasher genre. I really think it deserves 5 stars for how creative, original and brilliant it is and I’m looking forward to getting way more familiar with more of SGJ’s stories.

Walk of the Whales

 By: Nick Bland  

Location: PIC BLA

Genre: Whales of fun

When all of the whales in the ocean leave their home to walk around on land, people don’t quite know what to think.

When all of the whales in the ocean leave their home to walk around on land, people don't quite know what to think. But soon shopkeepers go out of business, farms are flooded with water and salt, and people shout horrible, anti-whale words. That is, until, a smart little girl decides to ask the whales what everyone can do to help. A powerful and entertaining story about the environment from best-selling author, Nick Bland.

Alice with a why- REturn to Wonderland

 By: Anna James   

Location: FIC JAM

Genre: Fantasy

Sue: This story is light and entertaining. It feels like it’s been ages since I last read something that actually reignited my love for reading. A quick and easy read!

Return to Wonderland in this extraordinary reimagining of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by one of our most brilliant storytellers
England, 1919. Alyce – with a Y – lives with her grandmother, the original Alice, having lost her father during the great war. When a mysterious invitation to a tea party hits her square in the face, Alyce realises her grandmother’s strange stories of a place called Wonderland might have some truth to them after all.

But the land Alyce finds herself in feels different to the Wonderland of her grandmother’s stories – for it is trapped in its own war. The Sun King and the Queen of the Moon are fighting over a stolen hour, and soon Alyce is tasked with setting it right. With the help of the Mad Hatter, the Cheshire Cat and a Sailor Fox, Alyce will have to solve Wonderland’s problems and, eventually, find her way back home.
enchanting adventure through Wonderland, and featuring new characters as well as old favourites, Alice With a Why is both a celebration of Lewis Carroll’s beloved original story, and a modern masterpiece.

Little Foxes

 By: Michael Morpurgo  

Location: FIC MOR

Genre: Animals

Lara's review:

This was an all right short read.

A boy named Billy is shuffled around various foster homes. He never stays for long. He has stuttering problems until one day, he meets a swan and he saves it and whilst he talks to it he stops stuttering.

He eventually comes across a family of foxes- a vixen and four cubs. The vixen is later killed by a car and he buries it and promises that he will take care of the cubs for her.

They are seen as vermin though and they are gassed and killed- all but one die. So he takes the remaining fox and tries to take it back to his foster home. His foster mother however tells him that if he wants to keep that fox he must leave.

They go on a run through the countryside, avoiding humans until they meet a man on a boat.
He eventually releases the fox and gets a new home, this time it's permament. He ends up living with that man and his wife because they just lost a son that was similar age to him.


There are a lot of lessons in this book -about taking care of nature, trusting people and knowing when it's time to let go and that wild animals can never be pets no matter how hard we try.


It's a lovely short book about nature and bonds that can form between humans and animals.

A spellbinding animal story from War Horse author and former Children's Laureate, Michael Morpurgo. Bullied at school, nagged in Aunty May's tenth-floor council flat, there's only one place ten-year-old Billy really feels alive – in the wilderness by the canal. 

There he watches a cygnet on the water and protects a family of fox cubs. Then his secret place is discovered and the fox family decimated. Unwanted and unloved, Billy and the last fox run for their lives … A gripping and poignant animal adventure from the master storyteller of An Eagle in the Snow, Listen to the Moon, Shadow, and An Elephant in the Garden.  –––  Former Children's Laureate Michael Morpurgo needs no introduction.

 He is one of the most successful children's authors in the country, loved by children, teachers and parents alike. Michael has written more than forty books for children including the global hit War Horse, which was made into a Hollywood film by Steven Spielberg in 2011. Several of his other stories have been adapted for screen and stage, including My Friend Walter, Why the Whales Came and Kensuke's Kingdom. Michael has won the Whitbread Award, the Smarties Award, the Circle of Gold Award, the Children's Book Award and has been short-listed for the Carnegie Medal four times.

 He started the charity Farms for City Children in 1976 with his wife, Clare, aimed at relieving the “poverty of experience… many young children feel in inner city and urban areas. Michael is also a patron of over a dozen other charities. Living in Devon, listening to Mozart and working with children have provided Michael with the ideas and incentive to write his stories. He spends half his life mucking out sheds with the children, feeding sheep or milking cows; the other half he spends dreaming up and writing stories for children. "For me, the greater part of writing is daydreaming, dreaming the dream of my story until it hatches out – the writing down of it I always find hard. But I love finishing it, then holding the book in my hand and sharing my dream with my readers." 

Alone

 By: Megan Freeman 

  Location: Fic Fre

Genre: Adventure

Perfect for fans of Hatchet and the I Survived series, this harrowing middle grade debut novel-in-verse from a Pushcart Prize–nominated poet tells the story of a young girl who wakes up one day to find herself utterly alone in her small Colorado town.

When twelve-year-old Maddie hatches a scheme for a secret sleepover with her two best friends, she ends up waking up to a nightmare. She’s alone—left behind in a town that has been mysteriously evacuated and abandoned.

With no one to rely on, no power, and no working phone lines or internet access, Maddie slowly learns to survive on her own. Her only companions are a Rottweiler named George and all the books she can read. After a rough start, Maddie learns to trust her own ingenuity and invents clever ways to survive in a place that has been deserted and forgotten.

As months pass, she escapes natural disasters, looters, and wild animals. But Maddie’s most formidable enemy is the crushing loneliness she faces every day. Can Maddie’s stubborn will to survive carry her through the most frightening experience of her life?