The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness

Winner of The Guardian Children's Fiction Prize

An unflinching novel about the impossible choices

of growing up...

You only have to read the first sentence to see how fantastic this novel promises to be:

 "The first thing you find out when your dog learns to talk is that dogs don't got nothing much to say."

It's hard to review The Knife of Never Letting Go without spoiling the story. It's so cunningly written that I was 100 pages in before I even realised what genre it was. I will say this, though: it lives up to the thrill of that first sentence.

It's not only his dog's thoughts that the hero, Todd Hewitt, can hear.

As the result of a virus, all the men in Prentisstown can hear each others' thoughts all the time. The resulting ongoing background jabber is called The Noise. It's a brilliant invention and, like a lot of brilliant inventions - Pullman's daemons, Philip Reeve's traction cities - it's an illuminating transformation of something very familiar.

The Noise made me more sharply aware of the static of MP3s, mobile phones, announcements, adverts, surveillance and traffic that interferes when we try to tune into our own thoughts, of the way our minds have been colonised by the market.

When Todd finds a pool of silence moving through the marshes at the edge of Prentisstown, it's not just a good plot point, it's also a stab of unexpected beauty. The source of that silence is a girl. There are no girls in Prentisstown, and finding her means that Todd has to escape. The book - which is the first part of a trilogy - is mostly the story of their flight. Frank Cottrell Boyce

Watch the author interviewed about his Chaos Walking Trilogy



About the Author

Patrick Ness is the author of The Knife of Never Letting Go and The Ask and the Answer – books one and two in the award-winning Chaos Walking trilogy. Patrick has written two other books for adults and is a literary critic for the Guardian. He lives in London.

The silent bark - The Knife of Never Letting Go is a deftly told tale of a boy's flight, says Frank Cottrell Boyce in The Guardian

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: or the Murder at Road Hill House by Kate Summerscale

'If you love Sherlock Holmes then you'll love this...'

'Very simply, this is a fantastic book, fantastically written and it's a book of deep moral purpose.'

Ekow Eshun, Newsnight Review

'What the book does brilliantly...is look at notions of class, criminality, human nature and religion in an age of change... terrific.'  Ian Rankin, The Guardian

It is a summer's night in 1860.

In an elegant detached Georgian house in the village of Road, Wiltshire, all is quiet.

Behind shuttered windows the Kent family lies sound asleep. At some point after midnight a dog barks. The family wakes the next morning to a horrific discovery: an unimaginably gruesome murder has taken place in their home.

The household reverberates with shock, not least because the guilty party is surely still among them.

Jack Whicher of Scotland Yard, the most celebrated detective of his day, reaches Road Hill House a fortnight later. He faces an unenviable task: to solve a case in which the grieving family are the suspects.

The murder provokes national hysteria. The thought of what might be festering behind the closed doors of respectable middle-class homes - scheming servants, rebellious children, insanity, jealousy, loneliness and loathing - arouses fear and a kind of excitement. But when Whicher reaches his shocking conclusion there is uproar and bewilderment.

A true story that inspired a generation of writers such as Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens and Arthur Conan Doyle, this has all the hallmarks of the classic murder mystery - a body; a detective; a country house steeped in secrets. In The Suspicions of Mr Whicher Kate Summerscale untangles the facts behind this notorious case, bringing it back to vivid, extraordinary life.

Watch the Author discussing the book



About the Author

Kate Summerscale was born 1965 and is an award-winning English writer and journalist. She is the author of The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or The Murder at Road Hill House which won the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-fiction in 2008, and the bestselling The Queen of Whale Cay. about Joe Carstairs the 'fastest woman on water', which won a Somerset Maugham Award in 1998 and was shortlisted for the 1997 Whitbread Awards for biography. She formerly worked for The Independent and from 1995 to 1996 she wrote and edited obituaries for The Daily Telegraph. She is also the former literary editor of The Daily Telegraph. Her articles have appeared in various national newspapers. She has also judged various literary competitions including the Booker Prize in 2001.

The birth of the detective - Ian Rankin is intrigued by this real-life whodunit in his review for The Guardian

A Week in December by Sebastian Faulks

'A vicious satire on modern life.' Daily Telegraph

`Faulks never writes a hackneyed or lazy sentence, polishing each with care' Independent on Sunday

`This intriguing book... takes the reader on a whistle-stop tour of society...' Waterstone's Books Quarterly

London, the week before Christmas, 2007.

Over seven days we follow the lives of seven major characters: a hedge fund manager trying to bring off the biggest trade of his career; a professional footballer recently arrived from Poland; a young lawyer with little work and too much time to speculate; a student who has been led astray by Islamist theory; a hack book-reviewer; a schoolboy hooked on skunk and reality TV; and a Tube train driver whose Circle Line train joins these and countless other lives together in a daily loop.

With daring skill, the novel pieces together the complex patterns and crossings of modern urban life.

Greed, the dehumanising effects of the electronic age and the fragmentation of society are some of the themes dealt with in this savagely humorous book. The writing on the wall appears in letters ten feet high, but the characters refuse to see it – and party on as though tomorrow is a dream.

Sebastian Faulks probes not only the self-deceptions of this intensely realised group of people, but their hopes and loves as well. As the novel moves to its gripping climax, they are forced, one by one, to confront the true nature of the world they inhabit.

This hugely ambitious novel is a delightful and witty satire on contemporary London life, says The Guardian...

Hardly anyone is spared in this searing dissection of modern British society according to Tibor Fischer in The Daily Telegraph

About the Author

Sebastian Faulks was born on 20 April 1953 and educated at Wellington College and Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He was the first literary editor of The Independent and became deputy editor of the Independent on Sunday before leaving in 1991 to concentrate on writing. He has been a columnist for The Guardian (1992-8) and the Evening Standard (1997-9). He continues to contribute articles and reviews to a number of newspapers and magazines. He wrote and presented the Channel 4 Television series, Churchill's Secret Army, which was broadcast in 1999.

Though his best known work is the bestselling Birdsong (1993), The Fatal Englishman: Three Short Lives is a multiple biography of the lives of the artist Christopher Wood, airman Richard Hillary and spy Jeremy Wolfenden. His fifth novel, Charlotte Gray (1998), completes the loose trilogy of books about France with an account of the adventures of a young Scottish woman who becomes involved with the French resistance during the Second World War. A film adaptation of the novel, starring Cate Blanchett, was first screened in 2002. His next novel, On Green Dolphin Street (2001), is a love story set against the backdrop of the Cold War. Human Traces, a book set in the 19th century and telling the tale of two friends who set up a pioneering asylum, was published in 2005. Engleby was published in 2007.

Faulks on Fiction is a compelling and personal look at the British novel through its greatest characters - the heroes, lovers, snobs and villains - and is also a major BBC series. Click on the video link to see Faulks interviewing contemporary writers on characters in fiction.



Sebastian Faulks lives with his wife and three children in London. He was awarded the CBE in 2002.

Find out more by clicking on the link below.

Find out more about Sebastian Faulks here...

The Silver Blade by Sally Gardner

"There is magic, romance, a hint of gothic coupled with vivid vignettes of Parisian life in all its post revolutionary squalor. The writing is beautiful, never forced and everything is cleverly woven together like an intricate tapestry...read The Silver Blade and succumb to the seduction of this master storyteller."

The French Revolution lives on in children's imaginations, if at all, largely thanks to The Scarlet Pimpernel. The tale of how a seemingly foppish aristocrat leads a double life, rescuing other aristocrats from the guillotine, has been a perennial favourite. Yet what about all the other innocents, who, in the days of the Terror, could be executed simply for showing pity for the condemned?

This, Sally Gardner's sequel to The Red Necklace, plunges us into that very question. At the end of the first book, Yann saved his beloved Sido and discovered that she loved him, but returned to Paris to rescue his friends while she sailed to England.

Now known as the Silver Blade, he performs in the theatre by night and by day rescues others from the guillotine, at enormous risk. A Romany, Yann can read people's thoughts, make them forget things and cause objects to move by force of concentration. The trouble is that his old enemy and Sidonie's, Count Kalliovski, has returned from the dead after making a pact with the Devil. The only man who can walk the streets during the Terror wearing the “decadent symbols of aristocracy”, he is living in a palace of bones in Paris's catacombs, with a monstrous black dog with human eyes.

Why does Kalliovski keep waxwork heads, how does he make them talk and what does he want of the master key-maker Quint? All will be revealed.

Set against a vivid historical background, prize winning author Sally Gardner brings to life the horrors of the French Revolution in this breath-taking adventure, complete with intrepid heroism and a touching love story.

Perfect for readers and fans of The Red Necklace and I, Coriander.

About the Author

Sally Gardner trained at art college and went on to work in the theatre, winning awards for her costume designs for some notable productions. After her twin daughters and her son were born she started to illustrate children's books, and then turned to writing. She lives in north London.  

Watch the author discuss growing up in Dickensian London, dyslexia and her new novel, THE SILVER BLADE.

The Enemy by Charlie Higson

The Enemy is a thrilling book - scary, moving, dramatic, action-packed, everything you want in a teen novel. 

They’ll chase you.

They’ll rip you open.

They’ll feed on you . . .

When the sickness came, every parent, police officer, politician – every adult – fell ill. The lucky ones died.

The others are crazed, confused and hungry. Only children under fourteen remain, and they’re fighting to survive. Now there are rumours of a safe place to hide.

And so a gang of children begin their quest across London, where all through the city – down alleyways, in deserted houses, underground – the grown-ups lie in wait.

But can they make it there – alive?

About the Author

Charlie Higson is a well-known writer of screenplays and novels, and is the author of the phenomenally successful Young Bond series. He is also a performer and co-creator of The Fast Show and Radio Four’s award-winning Down the Line series. Charlie is a big fan of horror films and is now hoping to give a great many children sleepless nights with this series.

Click here to read more about the first in this new series of books...

Here's an interview with Charlie Higson from The Times explaining why he wrote the book...

CHERUB 1: The Recruit by Robert Muchamore

Winner of the Red House Children's Book Award

'An excellent start to a promising series. It is every boy's wish to be a spy, and this book will enthrall every single one of them.' The Bookseller

'Punchy, exciting, glamorous and, what's more, you'll completely wish it was true.' The Sunday Express

WHAT IS CHERUB?

During World War Two, French civilians set up a resistance movement to fight against the German forces occupying their country. Many of their most useful operatives were children and teenagers. Some worked as scouts and messengers. Others befriended homesick German soldiers, gathering information that enabled the resistance to sabotage German military operations.
A British spy named Charles Henderson worked among these French children for nearly three years. After returning to Britain, he used what he’d learned in France to train twenty British boys for work on undercover operations. The codename for his unit was CHERUB.

Henderson died in 1946, but the organisation he created has thrived. CHERUB now has more than two hundred and fifty agents, all aged seventeen or under. Although there have been many technical advances in intelligence operations since CHERUB was founded, the reason for its existence remains the same: adults never suspect that children are spying on them.

A terrorist doesn’t let strangers in her flat because they might be undercover police or intelligence agents, but her children bring their mates home and they run all over the place.

The terrorist doesn’t know that a kid has bugged every room in her house, cloned the hard drive on her PC, and copied all the numbers in her phone book. The kid works for CHERUB.

CHERUB is not James Bond. There are no master criminals or high-tech gadgets. CHERUB kids live in the real world. They slip under adult radar and get information that sends criminals and terrorists to jail.

For official purposes, these children do not exist.

There's an extensive CHERUB website, start by reading about The Recruit here...

About the Author

Robert Muchamore was born in Islington in 1972 and spent thirteen years working as a private investigator. He loves Arsenal and watching people fall down holes. He hates swimming and getting chased by cows. He was inspired to create the CHERUB series by his nephews' complaints about the lack of anything for them to read! The CHERUB series (all 12 of them!) has now become a number one bestseller in several countries.

Click here to go to the author's own website

Unhooking the Moon by Gregory Hughes

Winner of the Booktrust Teenage Fiction Prize 2010

'A brave, zany and warm-hearted road story' The Guardian.

'It's funny, it's wise, it's beautifully written. It's not afraid of a bittersweet ending, and it came at me completely from left field.' Jill Murphy, The Bookbag.

"Where are you going?' asked border patrol.

'We're going to New York to see our grandma and the Empire State Building and the Statue of Libery and everything. And our granny's going to bake us her very own apple pie.' She sounded so convincing. Some days I wondered who the Rat really was.

'What's your granny's name?' asked the officer. That's it! The Rat's Little Red Riding Hood performance had ruined us.

'Grandma, of course.'

I was relieved when I heard laughter. 'Would you like to see our birth certificates?' said the Rat. She always had to overdo it! She wouldn't be satisfied until we were locked up!"

Meet the Rat: A dancing, football-playing gangster-baiting ten-year-old. When she foresaw her father's death, she picked up her football and decided to head for New York. Meet her older brother Bob: Protector of the Rat, but more often her follower, he is determined to find their uncle in America and discover a new life for them both. On their adventures across the flatlands of Winnipeg and through the exciting streets of New York, Bob and the Rat make friends with a hilarious con man and a famous rap star, and escape numerous dangers. But is their Uncle a rich business man, or is the word on the street, that he something more sinister, true? And will they ever find him?

Hughes has created a funny, warm, unique world that lives and breathes. Like I Capture the Castle, Breakfast at Tiffany's, The Curious Incident, Hughes' story and characters will resonate for many and for years to come.

Read an interview with the Booktrust Teenage Award winner here...

About the Author

Gregory Hughes was born and lives in Liverpool. After being expelled from Jesuit school, he went to a home for wayward boys, where he spent some very happy times. After some madcap years in his youth, he went to University to study computers. He has worked as everything from a dishwasher to a deep sea diver, and has worked in many countries including Norway, Canada and America.

A traveller's tale: read how the author came to write Unhooking the Moon

White Crow by Marcus Sedgwick

'This is a superb contemporary gothic horror story, ostensibly for teenagers but with a lot to say to adults too. Beautifully written and irresistably dynamic, it explores themes of heredity, of good and evil, of the possibility of redemption and of the vital necessity of love, wherever it may be found.' THE INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY

'Sedgwick is one of our most versatile children's writers - he can make young ones laugh and draw older readers into atmospheric, chilling dramas with equal skill. This may be his most ambitious book yet... It's a demanding read... explores religion, death, friendship, truth and love with an intensity that confident older readers will immerse themselves in.' Sally Morris DAILY MAIL


It's summer.

Rebecca is an unwilling visitor to Winterfold - taken from the buzz of London and her friends and what she thinks is the start of a promising romance.

Ferelith already lives in Winterfold - it's a place that doesn't like to let you go, and she knows it inside out - the beach, the crumbling cliff paths, the village streets, the woods, the deserted churches and ruined graveyards, year by year being swallowed by the sea.

Against her better judgement, Rebecca and Ferelith become friends, and during that long, hot, claustrophobic summer they discover more about each other and about Winterfold than either of them really want to, uncovering frightening secrets that would be best left long forgotten.

Interwoven with Rebecca and Ferelith's stories is that of the seventeenth century Rector and Dr Barrieux, master of Winterfold Hall, whose bizarre and bloody experiments into the after-life might make angels weep, and the devil crow.



About the Author

Marcus Sedgwick was born in 1968 in Kent, and has worked as a bookseller and inside children's publishing, becoming a writer for children in 1994, and well-known for the dark themes in his young adult fantasy books. He has illustrated some of his own books, and also produces woodcuts and stone carvings.

His first novel, Floodland (2000), winner of the 2000 Branford Boase Book Award, tells the tale of Zoe, who lives on her own on an island once part of England, and his second book, Witch Hill (2001), is about Jamie, a boy whose house is destroyed by fire. The Dark Horse (2002), borrows its tone from Norse myth, and Cowards (2003) is about two men who refuse to fight in the first World War. The Book of Dead Days (2003) and its sequel, Dark Flight Down (2004), tell of the search of Boy, Willow and Valerian, and their capture by Emperor Frederick.

My Swordhand is Singing (2006), was shortlisted for several book awards and was winner of the 2007 Booktrust Teenage Prize. Blood Red, Snow White (2007), was shortlisted for the 2007 Costa Children's Book Award.

His latest book is White Crow (2010), shortlisted for the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize. He has also recently published several books in The Raven Mysteries series, featuring Edgar the Raven and the Otherhand family.

Click here to visit Marcus Sedgewick's own website...

Interview with Marcus Sedgwick: 'There is almost nothing you can't tackle in a teenage novel'

Warehouse by Keith Gray

'Keith Gray is an outstanding writer for teenagers. This is strong stuff, not in any gratuitously sensational way, but because it credits his readers with an understanding of life's big issues - trust, loyalty, courage and survival.' - Lindsey Fraser - Scottish Book Trust

'Warehouse is Keith Gray on finest form, and doing what he does best: giving voices to the underdogs - Chris Wooding In a skilfully-constructed three-part narrative Keith Gray has produced a fast-paced, convincing and moving story. Warehouse deserves the widest readership.' - Alan Gibbons

'I know a place you can go' It's a secret place hidden among the run-down buildings of the derelict dockyards.

A community of young people who have gathered in an old warehouse to get away from a world they don't fit in to.

Through separate but interweaving narratives Warehouse tells the stories of three of the community's members. There's Robbie who is running away from his violent older brother, Frank, and needs some space to realise that the beatings are not his fault. Amy, who's supposed to be travelling in Europe but has had her rucksack stolen and is too proud to ask her smothering family for help. And then there's Lem, an ex-drug-addict and founder of the Warehouse community, whose perceived role as leader by the other young people is too much for him to cope with.

Warehouse is about many things. It's about the inequality of life. It's about bad luck...It's about evil people. But it's also about strength gained through loyalty and trust. It's funny, it's terrifying and it rings utterly true.

About the Author

I was brought up in Grimsby and as a child tried to avoid books. I was an eager rebel and a particularly enthusiastic pain-in-the-backside, but a reluctant reader. Teachers urged and parents moaned, but all in vain. Books were a necessary chore, like washing my dad’s car. I think everyone was surprised (even me) when I raced through Robert Westall’s The Machine Gunners from cover to cover – twice. This book was the starting point for me, making me want to write my own stories. My first book Creepers was published when I was 24 and it was shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Award. I have since written ten books including Warehouse (also shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Award ), Marlarkey (shortlisted for the Booktrust Teenage Prize ) and for younger readers The Runner (winner of a Smarties Silver Medal). I lectured for two years in Creative Writing at the University of Lincolnshire and Humberside, where I enjoyed working with people who shared the same interests and ambitions as I have. I now live in Edinburgh with my partner Jasmine and our parrot, Bellamy. I spend much of my time visiting schools to pass on my love of books and writing, as well as reviewing teenage fiction for the Guardian and the Scotsman.

Read an interview with Keith Gray here...

Now by Morris Gleitzman

Longlisted for the Guardian Children's Fiction prize 2010

Morris Gleitzman's acclaimed story of friends Felix and Zelda in Nazi-occupied Poland has captured the hearts and minds of readers worldwide. In Now he delivers the final chapter, bringing this most moving of stories into the present day.

I'm a big fan of Morris Gleitzman's highly underrated WWII series, and have been anticipating this title since I first read Once and Then over a year ago. Now is set in present day Australia and, though it's not the best of the trilogy, it's a brilliant end to Felix's heartbreaking but ultimately hopeful story.

Gleitzman's series has been consistently shocking, funny and important, and has mostly focused on Felix as a young boy. In Now, Felix is an old man, with a successful life and a loving family, including 11-year-old granddaughter Zelda. Her namesake comes from Felix's best friend Zelda, who heavily features in Once and Then, and who assists him in his bid to survive the Holocaust. It's a name that carries a lot of history for Felix, and is a name that his granddaughter is desperate to live up to.

A natural disaster strikes Felix's home, forcing both grandfather and granddaughter into confronting their demons, their fears and some home truths. Their relationship grows even more, as Zelda tries to help Felix come to terms with what he lost in the 1940s. It's not quite as heart-wrenching as Then, though I did tear up a few times as Felix relived his nightmare of a past.

As with previous books in the series, I wanted more, and could have read three times the relatively short page count. I love Felix, both as an innocent child and as a wise old man. He's the epitome of the word good, and is a fictional testament to all those people who survived the horrific events of the Holocaust. I'll never forget his story, or the stories of the real survivors who lived on to tell their tales. A Wondrous Reads Review.

The Guardian children's fiction prize contender explains to Michelle Pauli why his 'Holocaust trilogy' is as much about the best that humans are capable of as the worst...

About the Author

Morris Gleitzman was born in Lincolnshire and moved to Australia in his teens. He worked as a paperboy, a shelf-stacker, a frozen chicken de-froster, an assistant to a fashion designer and more, before taking a degree in Professional Writing at Canberra College and becoming a writer. He has written for TV, stage, newspapers and magazines but is best known for his hugely successful children's books including Two Weeks with the Queen, Bumface, Once and Then.

You can find out more at Morris Gleitzman's own website here...

The Falconer's Knot by Mary Hoffman

'Mary Hoffman's medieval murder mystery has all the ingredients needed to weave a satisfying web of intrigue ... This is a pacy and highly enjoyable read ... there is a freshness of perspective and intricacy of plot that lifts the story above the obvious or crass. The female characters and their struggles to find some autonomy beyond the confines of the roles allotted to them provide a particularly vivid thread beneath the mystery narrative ... I defy anyone to read this book and not want to visit Assisi.' The Guardian

Silvano and Chiara are two teenagers with a difference. Silvano has been accused of a murder he did not commit. Chiara has been ousted from her family as a young woman with no marriage prospects.

For these two very different reasons they are forced to seek refuge in a neighbouring convent and friary. And when they meet they are instantly aware that they are both outsiders, ill at ease with monastic life. Then a grisly murder - followed by another, and then another - strikes fear into the close-knit community. Chiara and Silvano cling together within the terrifying spiral of murder as they, and the friends they have made, attempt to solve the deadly mystery.

This remarkably rich mystery thriller, with all the pace and action of a 'whodunnit', is set in the incredibly atmospheric environs of a friary in 14th-century Italy.

Amidst all the action of the murder mystery, the author depicts in fascinating and intricate detail the lives and tasks of the friars and nuns, whether it be crushing pigments to create paints for the fresco artists in nearby Assisi, or the daily and nightly ritual of the religious services. All the historical detail is carefully researched. A huge cast of characters with romantic teen heroes, combined with the thriller-murder element, ensure a pacy, richly enjoyable read.

About the Author

Mary Hoffman is an acclaimed children's author and critic. She is the author of the internationally bestselling picture book Amazing Grace. Her Stravaganza sequence for Bloomsbury has its own fan forum and the latest, Stravaganza - City of Secrets, was longlisted for the Carnegie Medal and The Falconer's Knot was shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Award. She currently runs her own blog (you can read it here) and is working on her next historical novel. Mary has three grown-up daughters and lives with her husband in West Oxfordshire.

She also runs a website that you can access here...

Read The Guardian review of The Falconer's Knot by clicking on this link...

The Owl Service by Alan Garner

Winner of both the Guardian Award and the Carnegie Medal.

"A rare imaginative feat and the taste that it leaves is haunting." The Observer

"One of the first and best novels for and about teenagers; it remains one of the most original and gripping ghost stories. Timeless!" The Times

"Something was stirring in the valley, something powerful and old. Something which had no place in the rational modern world..."

Winner of both the Guardian Award and the Carnegie Medal, this is an all-time classic, combining mystery, adventure, history and a complex set of human relationships.

It all begins with the scratching in the ceiling. From the moment Alison discovers the dinner service in the attic, with its curious pattern of floral owls, a chain of events is set in progress that is to effect everybody's lives.

Relentlessly, Alison, her step-brother Roger and Welsh boy Gwyn are drawn into the replay of a tragic Welsh legend - a modern drama played out against a background of ancient jealousies. As the tension mounts, it becomes apparent that only by accepting and facing the situation can it be resolved.
In The Owl Service, Alan Garner takes this old, old story from the Welsh legends which make up the Mabinogion and blends it into the present. It's a fascinating book. There aren't any facile tricks of plot - no time travel, no spirits from the past inhabiting the pages of today.

The Owl Service is about a summer in a Welsh valley not thousands of years ago, but in the twentieth century. Alison and Gwyn find an old dinner service in the attic of the house where Gwyn's mother is housekeeper and which Alison has inherited from her father.

As Alison begins feverishly to trace and make paper owls from the flowered pattern on the plates, Gwyn and Roger join her in reliving the roles of that past drama. And yet, they are not possessed, they remain entirely themselves, with their own qualities, opinions, talents and problems. In the old time there were gods and goddesses, curses, heirs and fiefdoms. In the present time there are step-families and the class struggle. So different and yet somehow, so very much the same. The Bookbag

About the Author

Alan Garner was born and still lives in Cheshire, an area which has had a profound effect on his writing and provided the seed of many ideas worked out in his books.

His fourth book, 'The Owl Service' brought Alan Garner to everyone's attention.

It won two important literary prizes - The Guardian Award and the Carnegie Medal - and was made into a serial by Granada Television.

It has established itself as a classic and Alan Garner as a writer of great distinction.

Despite an OBE for services to children's literature, and the fact that books like The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and Elidor are the kind of absorbing childhood fantasy that reverberates into adulthood, to view Garner as a children's writer is reductive. He puts it best when he says: "I do not write for children, but for myself. Adolescents read my books. By adolescence, I mean an arbitrary age somewhere between 10 and 18." It's an in-between group, and Garner's books are likewise poised between passion and detachment, intensity and alienation, blunt modernity and ancient myth.

His style is stripped-down, yet shares dialect and linguistic relish with much older works. "The language of my childhood and of my native culture is, technically, North-west Mercian Middle English," he has said - the language of the Gawain poet. The layers of local history and a precise sense of place are paramount in his work.

He has been writing for over 40 years; each book is a lengthy project as he pours so much research into it (learning Welsh for The Owl Service, for example). Eventually, "I feel a jolt within me and I hear quite without any understanding; I hear words, which I put down". Not all his work is fantasy - the Stone Quartet follows four generations of Garner's family from the mid-19th century to the second world war. Strandloper, his first novel for adults, was a difficult, almost experimental, evocation of Aboriginal culture. In his 2003 adult book, Thursbitch, which grew out of his fascination with a mysterious tombstone on a Pennine track, he is back on home ground and all the better for it.
Want to know why Alan Garner writes? Click here to find out...

Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson

The story starts out simply enough: Jess Aarons wants to be the fastest boy in the fifth grade - he wants it so bad he can taste it. He's been practising all summer, running in the fields around his farmhouse until he collapses in a sweat. Then a tomboy named Leslie Burke moves into the farmhouse next door and changes his life forever. Not only does Leslie not look or act like any girls Jess knows, but she also turns out to be the fastest runner in the fifth grade. After getting over the shock and humiliation of being beaten by a girl, Jess begins to think Leslie might be alright.

Despite their superficial differences, it's clear that Jess and Leslie are soul mates. The two create a secret kingdom in the woods named Terabithia, where the only way to get into the castle is by swinging out over a gully on an enchanted rope. Here they reign as king and queen, fighting off imaginary giants and the walking dead, sharing stories and dreams, and plotting against the schoolmates who tease them. Jess and Leslie find solace in the sanctuary of Terabithia until a tragedy strikes and the two are separated forever.

In a style that is both plain and powerful, Katherine Paterson's characters will stir your heart and put a lump in your throat.

About the Author

Katherine Paterson was born in China in 1932, the middle of five children. Her parents were missionaries and during her childhood the family travelled extensively. After graduating she was a teacher in Virginia and later she travelled to Japan where she lived for four years. She now lives in Vermont, USA and teaches, reads and cooks. Katherine Paterson is twice winner of the Newbery Medal including her 1978 win for Bridge to Terabithia.

Here's the trailer for the 2007 film...

War Horse by Michael Morpurgo

From master storyteller, Michael Morpurgo comes an incredibly moving story about one horse's experience in the deadly chaos of the first world war.

In 1914, Joey, a young farm horse, is sold to the army and thrust into the midst of the war on the Western Front. With his officer, he charges towards the enemy, witnessing the horror of the frontline.

But even in the desolation of the trenches, Joey's courage touches the soldiers around him.

About the Author

Multi-award winning author, Michael Morpurgo, is one of Britain's best-loved writers for children and has won many prizes, including the Smarties Prize, The Writers Guild Award and the Blue Peter Book Award for his recent novel, Private Peaceful, which has also had two successful runs as a play devised by Bristol Old Vic. From 2003 to 2005 he was the Children's Laureate, a role which took him all over the UK to promote literacy and reading, and in 2005 he was named the Booksellers Association Author of the Year.

About the National Theatre Production

The award-winning smash hit War Horse is still playing at the New London Theatre.

War Horse is a thrilling and spectacular production based on the celebrated novel by Michael Morpurgo.
The First World War is the backdrop for this tale of bravery, loyalty, and the extraordinary bond between a young recruit and his horse.

Actors, working with astonishing life-sized puppets by the internationally renowned Handspring Puppet Company, take audiences on an unforgettable journey through history.

Winner of Olivier, Evening Standard and Critics’ Circle Awards.

Find out more here at the official website.

Here's the trailer to the theatrical production...

Atonement by Ian McEwan

'Atonement is a magnificent novel, shaped and paced with awesome confidence and eloquence.' The Independent

Atonement is Ian McEwan's ninth novel and his first since the Booker Prize-winning Amsterdam in 1998. But whereas Amsterdam was a slim, sleek piece, Atonement is a more sturdy, ambitious work, allowing McEwan more room to play, think and experiment.

We meet 13-year-old Briony Tallis in the summer of 1935, as she attempts to stage a production of her new drama The Trials of Arabella to welcome home her elder, idolised brother Leon. But she soon discovers that her cousins, the glamorous Lola and the twin boys Jackson and Pierrot, aren't up to the task, and directorial ambitions are abandoned as more interesting preoccupations come onto the scene.
 
The charlady's son Robbie Turner appears to be forcing Briony's sister Cecilia to strip in the Fountain and sends her obscene letters; Leon has brought home a dim chocolate magnate keen for a war to promote his new "Army Amo" bar; and upstairs Briony's migraine-stricken mother Emily keeps tabs on the house from her bed. Soon, secrets emerge that change the lives of everyone present...
 
The interwar upper-middle-class setting of the book's long, masterfully sustained opening section might recall Virginia Woolf or Henry Green, but as we move forward--eventually to the turn of the 21st century--the novel's central concerns emerge, and McEwan's voice becomes clear, even personal. For at heart, Atonement is about the pleasures, pains and dangers of writing, and perhaps even more, about the challenge of controlling what readers make of your writing. McEwan shouldn't have any doubts about readers of Atonement: this is a thoughtful, provocative and at times moving book that will have readers applauding.
Alan Stewart

About the Author

Ian McEwan is a critically acclaimed author of short stories and novels for adults, as well as The Daydreamer, a children's novel illustrated by Anthony Browne. His first published work, a collection of short stories, First Love, Last Rites, won the Somerset Maugham Award. His novels include The Child in Time, which won the 1987 Whitbread Novel of the Year Award, The Cement Garden, Enduring Love, Amsterdam, which won the 1998 Booker Prize, Atonement, Saturday and On Chesil Beach.

Here's the trailer for the 2007 film version starring Keira Knightley and James MacAvoy...

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

'One of the finest British writers of this century'
 A. Alvarez

WIDE SARGASSO SEA is set in 1830s Jamaica.

Born into an oppressive, colonialist society, white Creole heiress Antoinette Cosway meets a young Englishman who is drawn to her innocent beauty and sensuality.

After their marriage, however, disturbing rumours begin to circulate which poison her husband against her. Caught between his demands and her own precarious sense of belonging, Antoinette is inexorably driven towards madness.

This classic study of betrayal is Jean Rhys' brief, beautiful masterpiece.

The novel works as a prequel to Charlotte Brontë's famous 1847 novel. It is the story of the first Mrs. Rochester, Antoinette (Bertha) Mason, a white Creole heiress, from the time of her youth in the Caribbean to her unhappy marriage and relocation to England. Caught in an oppressive patriarchal society in which she belongs neither to the white Europeans nor the black Jamaicans, Rhys's novel re-imagines Brontë's devilish madwoman in the attic.

As with many postcolonial works, the novel deals largely with the themes of racial inequality and the harshness of displacement and assimilation.

About the Author

Jean Rhys was born in Dominica in 1890, the daughter of a Welsh doctor and a white Creole mother. She came to England when she was sixteen and then drifted into a series of jobs - chorus girl, mannequin, artist's model - after her father died.

She began to write when the first of her three marriages broke up. She was in her thirties by then, and living in Paris, where she was encouraged by Ford Madox Ford, who also discovered D. H. Lawrence. Ford wrote an enthusiastic introduction to her first book in 1927, a collection of stories called The Left Bank. This was followed by Quartet (1928), After Leaving Mr Mackenzie (1930), Voyage in the Dark (1934) and Good Morning, Midnight (1939).

None of these books was particularly successful, perhaps because they were decades ahead of their time in theme and tone, dealing as they did with women as underdogs, exploited and exploiting their sexuality. With the outbreak of war and subsequent failure of Good Morning, Midnight, the books went out of print and Jean Rhys literally dropped completely from sight. It was generally thought that she was dead. Nearly twenty years later she was rediscovered, largely due to the enthusiasm of the writer Francis Wyndham. She was living reclusively in Cornwall, and during those years had accumulated the stories collected in Tigers are Better-Looking.

In 1966 she made a sensational reappearance with Wide Sargasso Sea, which won the Royal Society of Literature Award and the W. H. Smith Award in 1966, her only comment on the latter being that 'It has come too late'. Her final collection of stories, Sleep It Off Lady, appeared in 1976 and Smile Please, her unfinished autobiography, was published posthumously in 1979. She was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1966 and a CBE in 1978. Jean Rhys died in 1979.

This is the trailer to the recent BBC4 production of the novel

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Jay Gatsby is the man who has everything. But one thing will always be out of his reach ... Everybody who is anybody is seen at his glittering parties. Day and night his Long Island mansion buzzes with bright young things drinking, dancing and debating his mysterious character. For Gatsby - young, handsome, fabulously rich - always seems alone in the crowd, watching and waiting, though no one knows what for. Beneath the shimmering surface of his life he is hiding a secret: a silent longing that can never be fulfilled. And soon this destructive obsession will force his world to unravel.

In 1922, F Scott Fitzgerald announced his decision to write "something new - something extraordinary and beautiful and simple, intricately patterned". That extraordinary, beautiful, intricately patterned and, above all, simple novel became The Great Gatsby, arguably Fitzgerald's finest work and certainly the book for which he is best known.

A portrait of the Jazz Age in all of its decadence and excess, Gatsby captured the spirit of the author's generation and earned itself a permanent place in American mythology. Self-made, self-invented millionaire Jay Gatsby embodies some of Fitzgerald's--and his country's--most abiding obsessions: money, ambition, greed and the promise of new beginnings. Gatsby's rise to glory and eventual fall from grace be comes a kind of cautionary tale about the American Dream.

It's also a love story, of sorts, the narrative of Gatsby's quixotic passion for Daisy Buchanan. The pair meet five years before the novel begins, when Daisy is a legendary young Louisville beauty and Gatsby an impoverished officer. They fall in love, but while Gatsby serves overseas, Daisy marries the brutal, bullying but extremely rich Tom Buchanan. After the war, Gatsby devotes himself blindly to the pursuit of wealth by whatever means--and to the pursuit of Daisy, which amounts to the same thing. "Her voice is full of money," Gatsby says admiringly, in one of the novel's more famous descriptions. His millions made, Gatsby buys a mansion across Long Island Sound from Daisy's patrician East Egg address, throws lavish parties and waits for her to appear. When s he does, events unfold with all the tragic inevitability of a Greek drama, with detached, cynical neighbour Nick Carraway acting as chorus throughout. Spare, elegantly plotted and written in crystalline prose, The Great Gatsby is as perfectly satisfying as the best kind of poem.
Perry Freeman, Amazon.com

About the Author

F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in 1896 in St Paul, Minnesota, and went to Princeton University which he left in 1917 to join the army. Fitzgerald was said to have epitomised the Jazz Age, an age inhabited by a generation he defined as 'grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken'.

In 1920 he married Zelda Sayre. Their destructive relationship and her subsequent mental breakdowns became a major influence on his writing. Among his publications were five novels, This Side of Paradise, The Great Gatsby, The Beautiful and Damned, Tender is the Night and The Love of the Last Tycoon (his last and unfinished work): six volumes of short stories and The Crack-Up, a selection of autobiographical pieces.

Fitzgerald died suddenly in 1940. After his death The New York Times said of him that 'He was better than he knew, for in fact and in the literary sense he invented a "generation" ... he might have interpreted them and even guided them, as in their middle years they saw a different and nobler freedom threatened with destruction.'

Here's the opening of the 1974 film version starring Robert Redford and Mia Farrow with a screenplay by Francis Ford Coppola to give you a taste for the 1920s...

Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks

"Ambitious, outrageous, poignant, sleep-disturbing, Birdsong is not a perfect novel - just a great one."

Simon Schama. New Yorker

"One of the finest novels of the last 40 years."

Brian Masters, Mail on Sunday

Set before and during the great war, Birdsong captures the drama of that era on both a national and a personal scale. It is the story of Stephen, a young Englishman, who arrives in Amiens in 1910. His life goes through a series of traumatic experiences, from the clandestine love affair that tears apart the family with whom he lives, to the unprecedented experiences of the war itself.

Readers who are entranced by sweeping historical sagas will devour Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks' drama set during the first world war.

The book's hero, a 20-year-old Englishman named Stephen Wraysford, finds his true love on a trip to Amiens in 1910. Unfortunately, she's already married, the wife of a wealthy textile baron. Wrayford convinces her to leave a life of passionless comfort to be at his side, but things do not turn out according to plan. Wraysford is haunted by this doomed affair and carries it with him into the trenches of the war.

Birdsong derives most of its power from its descriptions of mud and blood, and Wraysford's attempt to retain a scrap of humanity while surrounded by it. There is a simultaneous description of his present-day granddaughter's quest to read his diaries, which is designed to give some sense of perspective; this device is only somewhat successful. Nevertheless, Birdsong is a rewarding read, an unflinching war story and a touching romance.

The novel came 13th in a 2003 BBC survey called the Big Read which aimed to find Britain's favourite book.

About the Author

Sebastian Faulks was born on 20 April 1953 and educated at Wellington College and Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He was the first literary editor of The Independent and became deputy editor of the Independent on Sunday before leaving in 1991 to concentrate on writing. He has been a columnist for The Guardian (1992-8) and the Evening Standard (1997-9). He continues to contribute articles and reviews to a number of newspapers and magazines. He wrote and presented the Channel 4 Television series, Churchill's Secret Army, which was broadcast in 1999.

Though his best known work is the bestselling Birdsong (1993), The Fatal Englishman: Three Short Lives is a multiple biography of the lives of the artist Christopher Wood, airman Richard Hillary and spy Jeremy Wolfenden. His fifth novel, Charlotte Gray (1998), completes the loose trilogy of books about France with an account of the adventures of a young Scottish woman who becomes involved with the French resistance during the Second World War. A film adaptation of the novel, starring Cate Blanchett, was first screened in 2002. His next novel, On Green Dolphin Street (2001), is a love story set against the backdrop of the Cold War. Human Traces, a book set in the 19th century and telling the tale of two friends who set up a pioneering asylum, was published in 2005. Engleby was published in 2007.

Faulks on Fiction is a compelling and personal look at the British novel through its greatest characters - the heroes, lovers, snobs and villains - and is also a major BBC series. Click on the video link to see Faulks interviewing contemporary writers on characters in fiction.



Sebastian Faulks lives with his wife and three children in London. He was awarded the CBE in 2002.

Find out more by clicking on the link below.

Find out more about Sebastian Faulks here...

Click on the link to hear Faulks discussing Birdsong on the BBC World Service's World Book Club.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/specials/133_wbc_archive_new/page3.shtml

The BBC produced a TV version of the novel in early 2012. Here's the trailer...