Starseeker by Tim Bowler

'A thriller with a big heart and a real glimpse of the human soul, full of plot and passion, music and mystery.' Melvin Burgess

'A lovely, sure-footed novel. Bowler…is lyrical and emotionally charged – on full throttle, revving up our sense of what it is like to be a young person in the world today.' The Observer

'Compelling and suspenseful, this book understands that peer pressure for boys is tough, but is also full of male role models who are creative and sensitive.' Sunday Times

Luke's father is dead and he feels his mother is moving on too quickly. Since his father's death Luke has changed his priorities, and has fallen into bad company. His new friends persuade him to break into a house when its owner, an unfriendly and unlovable old woman, is out. Once inside he is confronted with the sound of a girl crying, and through a locked keyhole sees a young girl standing alone, crying in despair. Luke becomes drawn into finding out who the girl is, why she is in the house, and why she is so unhappy. Finding the answers will change all of their lives.

Tim Bowler has written 20 books and won 15 awards including the Carnegie Medal, the Angus Book Prize (twice), and the Lancashire Children's Book Award. To find out more about him, click on the link below.

http://www.timbowler.co.uk/home

We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates

We Were the Mulvaneys works not simply because of its meticulous details and gestures.... What keeps us coming back to Oates Country is something stronger and spookier: her uncanny gift of making the page a window, with something on the other side that we'd swear was life itself. - The New York Times Book Review

Everyone knows the Mulvaneys: Dad the successful businessman, Mike the football star, Marianne the cheerleader, Patrick the brain, Judd the runt, and Mom dedicated to running the family.

But after what sometime narrator Judd calls the events of Valentine's Day 1976, this ideal family falls apart and is not reunited until 1993. Oates's 26th novel explores this disintegration with an eye to the nature of changing relationships and recovering from the fractures that occur.

Through vivid imagery of a calm upstate New York landscape that any moment can be transformed by a blinding blizzard into a near-death experience, Oates demonstrates how faith and hope can help us endure.

At another level, the process of becoming the Mulvaneys again investigates the philosophical and spiritual aspects of a family's survival and restoration.

Joyce Carol Oates is one of America's most prolific and well loved authors. To find out more about her, click the link below

http://www.usfca.edu/jco/biography/

The Burying Beetle by Ann Kelley

'This is an atmospheric and beguiling book, written with a precision which guards it from sentimentality.' 
Helen Dunmore.

Gussie is twelve years old and settling into her new ramshackle home on a cliff top above St Ives in Cornwall. She has an irrepressible zest for life but also a life-threatening heart condition. Perhaps because she knows her time might be short, she values every passing moment, experiencing each day with humour and extraordinary courage. Spirited and imaginative, Gussie has a passionate interest in everything around her and her vivid stream of thoughts and observations will draw you into a renewed sense of wonder. Gussie's story of inspiration and hope is both heartwarming and heartrending.

Once you've met her, you'll not forget her. And you'll never take life for granted again.

To read about Ann Kelley and find out what else she has written click below

http://www.annkelley.co.uk/

Nobody's Girl by Sarra Manning

Shortlisted for the Booktrust Teenage Fiction Award

'A fabulous coming of age romp.' Now

'One of the most endearing characters you'll ever come across.' Book Fest Reading Guide

I went a little bit stark-raving bonkers. That’s the only explanation that makes any sense.

Usually, I’m not the kind of girl who does crazy, stupid or irresponsible things. I look both ways before I cross the road. I drink two litres of water and eat at least five portions of fruit and vegetables every day. I aim for eight hours’ sleep a night. Respect my elders. Don’t talk back.Mind my Ps and Qs. Floss twice daily.

Let’s face it, no one can be as boring and perfect as me and not lose it just once. But I couldn’t lose it in a safe, controlled environment. No, I had to lose it at a train station in Malaga.

Bea thinks she's the most boring seventeen-year-old in the world. She's not pretty or popular or funny, unlike her mother who had Bea when she was 17. The only glamorous thing about Bea is the French father who left before she was born and lives in Paris.

She yearns for la vie Parisienne every moment of her dull existence. So when Ruby Davies, the leader of her school's most elite clique picks Bea as her new best friend and asks her to go on holiday with them, she's wary but delighted. If nothing else it's two weeks away from her over-protective mother.

But when the gang arrive in Spain, Bea is crushed to realise that Ruby and her posse have simply been using her. Bea wreaks vengeance on her so-called friends, and plans to decamp to Paris to find her father. But when she falls asleep on the train and wakes up in Bilbao, she meets a group of American students who are backpacking around Europe and bonds with them straight away, especially the gorgeous Toph who helps heals Bea's hurting heart.

Though Bea has a shock in store when they finally get to Paris. The 'City of Lovers' really works it magic on Bea and Toph who spend a week wandering the sun-dappled streets of Paris, talking, holding hands and falling in love. When it comes time to go home to confront her Mum about her mysterious father, the new version of Bea is determined that she'll never go back to her old, boring way of life - she's no longer Nobody's Girl; she belongs to herself and to Toph...

But with an ocean between them, will he wait for her?

Find out more about the book and the author by clicking here...

About the Author

Sarra Manning is a teen queen extraordinaire. She spent five years working on the legendary but now sadly defunct UK teen mag, J17, first as a writer and then as Entertainment Editor. She then joined the launch team and became editor of teen fashion bible Ellegirl UK. There followed a stint as editor of the BBC's What To Wear and consulting on Bliss, The Face and More. Sarra now writes for ELLE,  Grazia, Red, InStyle, The Guardian, The Mail On Sunday's You magazine and The Sunday Telegraph's Stella. Her best-selling teen novels, which include Guitar Girl, Let's Get Lost and The Diary Of A Crush trilogy, have been translated into numerous languages and in 2008, she was short listed for the Book People's Queen of Teen award. In 2009, her first adult novel, Unsticky, was published by Headline Review. Sarra lives in North London.

Looking for JJ by Anne Cassidy

Winner of the Booktrust Teenage Prize

'In less assured hands this could have been a well-intentioned failure, but Cassidy is in absolute control of her material. Compassionate, unsensational and unflinching...' The Guardian

When a 10-year-old girl kills her best friend, she is convicted of manslaughter and locked away.Seven years later she is released on licence with a new identity.

In this brave and intelligent novel, Anne Cassidy explores a myriad of themes, questioning everything from the ethics of tabloid journalism to the outcome of ineffectual parenting.

It asks more questions than it answers and suggests that in some circumstances there is no 'right' or 'wrong', merely 'consequences'. Should our sympathy lie with the killer as she is relentlessly pursued by the press, hungry for a story, or with the victim and her family in a society desperate for justice?

This is a brilliant and disturbing piece of writing that looks behind the headlines and forces the reader to question some of their attitudes to a number of contemporary issues.

Anne Cassidy explains why she wanted to write such a difficult book and speaks about the response it has engendered among young readers....

About the Author

Anne Cassidy was born in London in 1952, and worked for some years as a teacher, before becoming a full-time writer. She specializes in crime stories and thrillers for teenagers, and has written a series of East End Murder books: A Family Affair (1995); Accidental Death (1996); End of the Line (1996); No Through Road (1996); Brotherly Love (1997); Death by Drowning (1999); Killing Time (1999); and Dead Quiet (2000).

Her books also include Missing Judy (2002), the story of Kim, whose sister Judy has been missing for six years, and Looking for JJ (2004).

JJ is Jennifer Jones, a girl who is released after serving a sentence for manslaughter for a crime she committed when she was ten years old. This book was shortlisted for the 2004 Whitbread Children’s Book Award and won the Booktrust Teenage Prize.

Two of her most recent books are The Story of my Life (2007), the story of Kevin, a teenage boy who is drawn into crime; and Forget Me Not (2008).

To find out more about the author click here...

Nowhere to hide - Jan Mark appreciates a chilling tale of betrayal and death in Anne Cassidy's 2004 prize winner...

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...