Once A Monster
London, 1861: Ten-year-old Nell belongs to a crew of mudlarks who work a stretch of the Thames along the Ratcliffe Highway. An orphan since her mother died four years past, leaving Nell with only broken dreams and a pair of satin slippers in her possession, she spends her days dredging up coals, copper and pieces of iron spilled by the river barges – searching for treasure in the mud in order to appease her master, Benjamin Murdstone.
But one day, Nell discovers a body on the shore. It’s not the first corpse she’s encountered, but by far the strangest. Nearly seven feet tall, the creature has matted hair covering his legs, and on his head are the suggestion of horns. Nell’s fellow mudlarks urge her to steal his boots and rifle his pockets, but as she ventures closer the figure draws breath – and Nell is forced to make a decision which will change her life forever.
Book of the Month
The Sunday Times
Paris By Starlight
Every night on the long journey to Paris from their troubled homeland, Levon’s grandmother has read to them from a very special book called The Nocturne.
It is a book full of the stories and heroic adventures of their people who, generations before, chose to live by starlight.
With every story that Levon’s grandmother tells them in their new home, the desire to live as their ancestors did grows. And that is when the magic begins…
But not everyone in Paris is won over by the spectacle of Paris-by-Starlight. There are always those who fear the other, the unexplained, the strangers in their midst.
A fairytale for adults
The Observer
The Toymakers
Do you remember when you believed in magic?
It is 1917, and while war wages across Europe, in the heart of London, there is a place of hope and enchantment.
The Emporium sells toys that capture the imagination of children and adults alike: patchwork dogs that seem alive, toy boxes that are bigger on the inside, soldiers that can fight battles of their own. Into this family business comes young Cathy Wray, running away from a shameful past. The Emporium takes her in, makes her one of its own.
But Cathy is about to discover that the Emporium has secrets of its own…
There is magic at heart
Sunday Express
Gingerbread
Fairy tale and history, wilderness and civilisation collide in this brilliant and magical novel.
About the book
In the depths of winter in the land of Belarus, where ancient forests straddle modern country borders, an orphaned boy and his grandfather go to scatter his mother’s ashes in the woodlands. Her last request to rest where she grew up will be fulfilled.
Frightening though it is to leave the city, the boy knows he must keep his promise to mama: to stay by and protect his grandfather, whatever happens. Her last potent gifts – a little wooden horse, and hunks of her homemade gingerbread – give him vigour. And grandfather’s magical stories help push the harsh world away.
But the driving snow, which masks the tracks of forest life, also hides a frozen history of long-buried secrets. And as man and boy travel deeper among the trees, grandfather’s tales begin to interweave with the shocking reality of his own past, until soon the boy’s unbreakable promise to mama is tested in unimaginable ways.
A novel of perfect balance, where past reaches into present
Ali Shaw
Little Exiles
A stunning novel set in the wake of the Second World War.
About the book
In 1949, England’s children’s homes overflow with boys and girls left destitute by war. For these children, the future is bleak: long childhoods left in institutions, poverty, and prison.
Yet, there is an answer. Across the world, Britain’s colonies are in desperate need of new white stock to shore up their populations – and, from Australia, a clarion call is sent out: bring us your children.
When his mother leaves him at a boys’ home in Chapeltown, nine-year-old Jon Heather finds himself part of an enforced migration scheme orchestrated by charitable organisation, the Children’s Crusade. He, like hundreds of others, will sail to the ends of the world, there to forge a new life. For the boys of the Children’s Crusade, life will be a strict regime of hard work and discipline, designed to make proud Australian men out of terrified English boys.
Meanwhile, Australia’s own government is marshalling its resources for childsnatching of a different order: the rescue of ‘half-caste’ aboriginal children from their parents, and their transformation into good, useful members of white civilisation.
So begins an odyssey that will last a lifetime, as Jon Heather and his group of unlikely friends battle to make their way back home.
A superb novel
Daily Mail