Books

GLOBBY GREEN ALIENS! INTERGALACTIC POLICE! PIRATES! And most definitely NOT a time-travelling hot-air balloon piloted by the brilliant dinosaur scientist Professor Steg…

Meesha loves making things . . . but there’s one thing she finds difficult to make – friends. She doesn''t know quite what to do, what to say or when to say it. But one day she discovers that she has a special talent that might just help her navigate social situations - and maybe even make new friends. A warm and affectionate look at the joys and difficulties of making and keeping friends, relating to others, and finding your place in the world.

In the Wilds of Kandala, apothecary apprentice Tessa Cade has been watching people suffer for too long. A mysterious sickness is ravaging the land and the cure, Moonflower Elixir, is only available for the wealthy. So every night, she defies the royal edicts and sneaks out, stealing Moonflower petals and leaving the elixir for those in need.

October and her dad live in the woods. They know the trees and the rocks and the lake and stars like best friends. They live in the woods and they are wild. And that''s the way it is. Until the year October turns eleven. That''s the year October rescues a baby owl. It''s the year Dad falls out of the biggest tree in their woods. The year the woman who calls herself October''s mother comes back. The year everything changes. Written in Katya Balen''s heart-stoppingly beautiful style, this book is a feast for the senses. And, as October fights to find the space to be wild in the whirling chaos of the world beyond the woods, it is also a feast for the soul.

Tilda''s world is just as she likes it . . . until one day, it turns completely UPSIDE DOWN. All of a sudden, everything is topsy-turvy, and nothing feels right. Things that were once easy now seem incredibly challenging.

In his notebooks, day after day, he makes a clear and careful record of its wonders: the labyrinth of halls, the thousands upon thousands of statues, the tides that thunder up staircases, the clouds that move in slow procession through the upper halls. On Tuesdays and Fridays Piranesi sees his friend, the Other. At other times he brings tributes of food to the Dead. But mostly, he is alone.

Messages begin to appear, scratched out in chalk on the pavements. There is someone new in the House. But who are they and what do they want? Are they a friend or do they bring destruction and madness as the Other claims?

Lost texts must be found; secrets must be uncovered. The world that Piranesi thought he knew is becoming strange and dangerous.

The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite.

Penal Colony No. 74 , AKA White Eagle, lies some 600 kilometres north of Yekaterinburg in Russia's Sverdlovskaya Oblast. Imprisoning the country's most brutal criminals, it is a winter-ravaged hellhole of death and retribution . And that's exactly why the Englishman is there.  Six years ago, Raglan was a soldier in the French Foreign Legion engaged in a hard-fought war on the desert border of Mali and Algeria. Amid black ops teams and competing intelligence agencies, his strike squad was compromised and Raglan himself severely injured.  His war was over, but the deadly aftermath of that day has echoed around the world ever the assassination of four Moscow CID officers; kidnap and murder on the suburban streets of West London; the fatal compromise of a long-running MI6 operation.  Raglan can't avoid the shockwaves. This is personal. It is up to him to finish it and it ends in Russia's most notorious penal colony. But how do you break into a high security prison in the middle of nowhere? More importantly, how do you get out?