Angie Thomas (Walker Books) There are two Starr Carters: the girl from Garden Heights, the black underprivileged neighbourhood that has always been her home, and the girl from Williamson Prep, the predominantly white school her parents send her and her brothers to. She likes to keep it that way. Until she is the sole witness …
14+
Just Like Tomorrow
Faïza Guène (Definitions) Kiffe kiffe demain, translated by Sarah Adams Doria is fifteen, a beur (French of Arabic descent) living in a soulless high rise in suburban Paris. Painfully shy, struggling at school, obsessed by TV programmes, she lives alone with her illiterate mother after having both been abandoned by their violent good for nothing …
Remix
Non Pratt (Walker Books) Didn’t get a Glastonbury ticket this year? Missing the festival atmosphere? You can nonetheless experience camping, first-aid tents, burger vans, cocky rockstars and even manky festival toilets in Non Pratt’s new book Remix. Kaz and Ruby have been best friends since the first day of secondary school. Ruby is as loud as …
Sinner
Maggie Stiefvater (Scholastic) Cole St Clair is back in L.A. to make a music and to appear on a online reality show hosted by the notorious Baby North. But is that his only reason for being back? After all, Isabel Culpeper lives in L.A. too these days, and they have unfinished business to take care …
The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender
Leslye Walton (Walker Books) The Roux family have had their fair share of misfortune when it comes to love. When she finally settles in a quiet neighbourhood of Seattle, Emilienne Roux hopes to have left the Roux love curse behind. But fate has a way of finding you wherever you are hiding, and Emilienne, and later …
Tinder
Sally Gardner, with artwork by David Roberts (Indigo, an imprint of Orion Children’s Books) Otto has been a soldier for most of his life, and tired of war and wounded, he nonetheless makes a final stand by defying Death. His escape takes him to a dark world of magic, mystery and blood-thirsty beasts. He also …
Yellowcake
Margo Lanagan (David Fickling Books) Yellowcake is Margo Lanagan’s fourth short stories anthology and brings together ten short stories, transcending through genres and worlds, taking readers on journeys to biblical times and war-torn post-apocalyptic towns, and plenty more in between. Some of the stories are either retellings of well-known tales or at least hint at tales readers might know; “The Golden Shroud” …
FOCUS ON: Teen Titles from Barrington Stoke
Barrington Stoke is 15 years old this year, and that’s well worth celebrating. For schools across the land, Barrington Stoke books are a godsend. Books that are accessible to reluctant and struggling readers but deal with subjects that they are interested in were rare for a long time. Until they came along, if you were a …
The Last Minute
Eleanor Updale(David Fickling Books) 9.21am: it is business as usual on the high Street in Heathwick, a typical English town. 9.22am: the high street is torn apart by several successive explosions.But what happened in that last minute? What circumstances have resulted in the tragedy that unfolds at 9.22am? Was is a gas leak, a plane …