The Girl with Glass Feet by Ali Shaw
Blurb: A mysterious and frightening metamorphosis has befallen Ida MacLaird – she is slowly turning into glass. She returns to St Haudas Land, Where she believes the glass first took hold, in the hope of finding the one man who might just be able to cure her . . .
Midas Crook is a lonely young islander. When he meets Ida, something about her sad, defiant spirit pierces his emotional defences. As Midas helps Ida come to terms with her affliction, she gradually unpicks the knots of his heart, and they begin to fall in love . . .
What they need most is time – and time is slipping away fast. Will they find a way to stave off the spread of glass? The Girl with Glass Feet is a dazzlingly imaginative and gripping first novel, an enchanting love story to treasure.
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The Calligraphers Daughter by Eugenia Kim
Blurb: Najin Han, the privileged daughter of a calligrapher, longs to choose her own destiny. Smart and headstrong, she is encouraged by her mother but her stern father is determined to maintain tradition, especially as the Japanese steadily gain control of his beloved country. When he seeks to marry fourteen-year-old Najin into an aristocratic family, her mother defies generations of obedient wives and instead sends her daughter to serve in the kings court as a companion to a young princess. But the king is soon assassinated, and the centuries-old dynastic culture comes to its end. In the shadow of the dying monarchy, Najin begins a journey through increasing oppression that will change her world forever. As she desperately seeks to continue her education, will the unexpected love she finds along the way be enough to sustain her through the violence and subjugation her country continues to face? Spanning thirty years, The Calligaphers Daughter is a richly drawn novel about a country torn between ancient customs and modern possibilities, a family ultimately united by love and a woman who never gives up her search for freedom.
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Blurb: Nothing much happens in the sleepy town of Venus Cove. But everything changes when three angels, Ivy, Bethany and Gabriel are sent from heaven to protect the town against the gathering forces of darkness. They work hard to conceal their true identity and, most of all, their wings.
But the mission is threatened when the youngest angel, Bethany, is sent to high school and falls for the handsome school captain, Xavier Woods. Will she defy the laws of Heaven by loving him?
Things come to a head when the angels realize they are not the only supernatural power in Venus Cove. There?s a new kid in town and he?s charming, seductive and deadly. Worst of all, he?s after Beth.
The angels and Xavier must work together to overcome the dark forces but will Beth survive the battle?
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Five Parts Dead by Tim Pegler
Blurb: What do you do when you’ve just lost three of your best mates?
Who do you turn to when your life is suddenly bound to a wheelchair?
Dan has dodged the Reaper again. If he were a cat, five of his nine lives would be gone—when his mates didn’t even get second chances. He’s still grieving their deaths when he’s dragged on a family holiday at a remote island lighthouse. Left alone, at what feels like the end of the earth, Dan starts sensing a mysterious girl. Is she a dream? Or has he somehow hooked into the spirit world? The lighthouse logbook helps illuminate some of the girl’s tragic story but Dan will have to dig deeper to find answers and the inspiration to embrace life again.
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No and Me by Delphine de Vigan
Blurb: Lou Bertignac has an IQ of 160 and a good friend called Lucas who gets her through the school day. At home her father cries in secret in the bathroom and her mother hasnt been out of the house properly for years. But Lou is about to change her life and that of her parents for good, all because of a school project she decides to do about the homeless. Through the project Lou meets No, a teenage girl living on the streets. As their friendship grows, Lou cannot bear that No is still on the streets when she goes back home even if it is to a home that is saddened and desolate. So she asks her parents if No can come to live with them. To her astonishment, her parents eventually agree. Nos presence forces Lou and her parents to finally face the sadness that has enveloped them. But No has disruptive as well as positive effects. Can this shaky, newfound family continue to live together?
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The Botticelli Secret by Marina Fiorato
Blurb: Gloriously fresh and vivid, with a deliciously irreverent heroine, The Botticelli Secret is a masterful concoction of enticing mystery, historical intrigue and romantic adventure. Resplendent fifteenth-century Italy is seen through the eyes of the gorgeous Luciana Vetra, part-time model and full-time prostitute.
After a request from one of her most exalted clients to pose for a painter friend, Luciana agrees to model for the central figure of Flora in Botticellis masterpiece Primavera But when the artist dismisses her without payment, Luciana impulsively steals an unfinished version of the painting only to find that friends and clients are slaughtered around her in an attempt to get it back. So Luciana turns to the one man who has never desired her beauty, novice monk Brother Guido Della Torre, to discover what could be so valuable about the painting. Fleeing Florence together, Luciana and Guido race through the seven cities of Renaissance Italy pursued by ruthless enemies who are determined to keep them from decoding the paintings secrets.
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The Rembrandt Affair by Daniel Silva
Blurb: Two families, one terrible secret, and a painting to die for . . .
Glastonbury, an art restorer, has been brutally murdered, and the newly discovered Rembrandt he was working on has disappeared.
For spy turned art restorer Gabriel Allon, it has been six months since his final showdown with the murderous Russian oligarch and arms dealer Ivan Kharkov. He has severed his ties with the Office with only one thing in mind: recovery. But this unspeakable act of violence once again draws Allon into a world of danger he thought he had left behind for ever.
Allon is persuaded to use his unique skills to trace the painting and those responsible for the crimes. As he investigates, he discovers there are terrible secrets connected to the painting, and terrible men behind them. Before he is done, he will have undertaken a journey through some of the twentieth centurys darkest history – and come face to face with some of the same darkness within himself.
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Blurb: Just when Dru thought she was safe, everything exploded in her face. Her mom and dad are long gone, her protectors Graves and Christophe kinda want to rip each others throats out, and a four-hundred-year-old nosferat named Sergej wont stop hunting her until his bloodthirsty army of suckers has torn her to shreds.
Drus finally made it to the Schola Prima - the Real Deal djamphir training facility and home of the Order and life is about to get even more Real World. Theres a brand new svetocha in town a readheaded vixen named Anna whos got the Order wrapped around her pretty little finger, and whod rather kill Dru than share the spotlight. Turns out Drus got something Anna wants. And his name just happens to be Christophe Reynard.
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32 Candles by Ernessa T Carter
Blurb: Davie—an ugly duckling growing up in small-town Mississippi—is positive her life couldn’t be any worse. She has the meanest mother in the South, possibly the world, and on top of that, she’s pretty sure she’s ugly. Just when she’s resigned herself to her fate, she sees a movie that will change her life—Sixteen Candles. But in her case, life doesn’t imitate art. Tormented endlessly in school with the nickname Monkey Night, and hopelessly in unrequited love with a handsome football player, James Farrell, Davie finds that it is bittersweet to dream of Molly Ringwald endings. When a cruel school prank goes too far, Davie leaves the life she knows and reinvents herself in the glittery world of Hollywood—as a beautiful and successful lounge singer in a swanky nightclub.
Davie is finally a million miles from where she started—until she bumps into her former obsession, James Farrell. To Davie’s astonishment, James doesn’t recognize her, and she can’t bring herself to end the fantasy. She lets him fall as deeply in love with her as she once was with him. But is life ever that simple? Just as they’re about to ride off into the sunset, the past comes back with a vengeance, threatening to crush Davie’s dreams—and break her heart again.
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A Small Death in the Great Glen by A D Scott
Blurb: In the Highlands of 1950s Scotland, a boy is found dead in a canal lock. Two young girls tell such a fanciful story of his disappearance that no one believes them. The local newspaper staff—including Joanne Ross, the part-time typist embroiled in an abusive marriage, and her boss, a seasoned journalist determined to revamp the paper—set out to uncover and investigate the crime. Suspicion falls on several townspeople, all of whom profess their innocence. Alongside these characters are the people of the town and neighboring glens; a refugee Polish sailor; an Italian family whose cafE boasts the first known cappuccino machine in the north of Scotland; and a corrupt town clerk subverting the planning laws to line his own pocket.
Together, these very different Scots harbor deep and troubling secrets underneath their polished and respectable veneers—revelations that may prevent the crime from being solved and may keep the town firmly in the clutches of its shadowy past.
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Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok
Blurb: Kimberly Chang has her world turned upside-down when she moves with her mother from their home in Hong Kong to New York. But their new life doesnt quite live up to their expectations living in a vermin-ridden apartment in Brooklyn, the pair only have a sometimes working oven to keep warm. They have nothing but debt and neither of them speaks a word of English.
While her mother spends her days earning two cents a garment at a sweatshop, intellectually gifted eleven-year-old Kim faces a new and trying challenge: school. Exiled by language, estranged in a new culture and weighed down by staggering poverty, Kim must learn to translate not just her language but who she is as she straddles these two very different worlds.
In this powerful story, Jean Kwok spins a moving tale of hardship and triumph, of heartbreak and love, of all thats said without words and all that gets lost in translation.
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Blurb: Rogue spirits and psychopomps are terrorising people, and now someone is planning to open the gates to the City of Ghosts and unleash the dead on humanity. Faced with her greatest challenge yet, Chess has to travel to the spirit city to finally lay all her ghosts to rest
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A Matter of Magic by Patricia C Wrede
Blurb: When a stranger offers her a small fortune to break into a traveling magicians wagon, Kim doesnt hesitate. Having grown up a waif in the dirty streets of London, Kim isnt above a bit of breaking-and-entering. A hard life and lean times have schooled her in one lesson: steal from them before they steal from you. But when the magician catches her in the act, Kim thinks shes done for. Until he suggests she become his apprentice; then the real trouble begins.
Kim soon finds herself entangled with murderers, thieves, and cloak-and-dagger politics, all while trying to learn how to become both a proper lady and a magician in her own right. Magic and intrigue go hand in hand in A Matter of Magic, a fast paced novel filled with mystery and romance, set against the intricate backdrop of Regency England.
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Gullstruck Island by Frances Hardinge
Blurb: On Gullstruck Island the volcanoes quarrel, beetles sing danger and occasionally a Lost is born In the village of the Hollow Beasts live two sisters. Arilou is a Lost – a child with the power to depart her body and mind-fly with the winds – and Hathin is her helper. Together they hide a dangerous secret. Until sinister events threaten to uncover it. With a blue-skinned hunter on their trail and a dreadlocked warrior beside them, they must escape. Can the fate of two children decide the future of Gullstruck Island?
Discover a dazzling world, a breathtaking heroine and an incredible adventure!
