Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

'Psychologically, the latter part of Great Expectations is about the best thing Dickens ever did.'

George Orwell

A terrifying encounter with an escaped convict in a graveyard on the wild Kent marshes.

A summons to meet the bitter, decaying Miss Havisham and her beautiful, cold-hearted ward Estella.

The sudden generosity of a mysterious benefactor.

These form a series of events that change the orphaned Pip's life forever, and he eagerly abandons his humble origins to begin a new life as a gentleman.

Dickens's haunting late novel depicts Pip's education and development through adversity as he discovers thetrue nature of his 'great expectations'!

About the Author

Charles Dickens was born on 7 February 1812. He enjoyed his first commercial success with The Pickwick Papers in 1836, swiftly followed by the serialization of Oliver Twist a year later. By the publication of The Old Curiosity Shop in 1841, Dickens was internationally famous. Great Expectations was first published in serial form in All the Year Round magazine between 1860 and 1861. His novels, many now adapted for TV and film, continue to entertain readers all over the world.

In December the BBC will show a major new adaptation, forming part of their celebration of Dickens and the bicentenary of his birth in 2012.

Call the Midwife by Jennifer Worth

A fascinating slice of social history - Jennifer Worth's tales of being a midwife in 1950s London has been commissioned as a major BBC TV series.

Jennifer Worth came from a sheltered background when she became a midwife in the Docklands in the 1950s.

The conditions in which many women gave birth just half a century ago were horrifying, not only because of their grimly impoverished surroundings, but also because of what they were expected to endure. But while Jennifer witnessed brutality and tragedy, she also met with amazing kindness and understanding, tempered by a great deal of Cockney humour. She also earned the confidences of some whose lives were truly stranger, more poignant and more terrifying than could ever be recounted in fiction.

Attached to an order of nuns who had been working in the slums since the 1870s, Jennifer tells the story not only of the women she treated, but also of the community of nuns (including one who was accused of stealing jewels from Hatton Garden) and the camaraderie of the midwives with whom she trained. Funny, disturbing and incredibly moving, Jennifer's stories bring to life the colourful world of the East End in the 1950s.

About the Author

Jennifer Worth trained as a nurse at the Royal Berkshire Hospital, Reading, and was later ward sister at the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital in London, then the Marie Curie Hospital, also in London. Music had always been her passion, and in 1973 she left nursing in order to study music intensively, teaching piano and singing for about twenty-five years. Jennifer died in May 2011 leaving her husband Philip, two daughters and three grandchildren. Her books have all been bestsellers.

Here's an introduction written by the author

Comedy and tragedy are the faces of the double mask of the ‘Commedia dell’Arte’. This is the Theatre of Life where the writer must start. Writers with no experience of life have nothing to say. The writer must dwell in the thick of human life and get the hands dirty. Truth is always richer and stranger than fiction.

What is more central to life than birth? A midwife is always present, yet a midwife’s role has never before been documented. I was a district midwife fifty years ago, going around the slums of the London Docklands on a bicycle.

The docks were fully operational and employed most of the men. The bug- infested tenements (those that were still standing after the Blitz) housed tens of thousands of people, and overcrowding was chronic. There was no Pill, and families were large, sometimes huge. None of the flats or houses had a telephone. Few of them had running water or even a lavatory. Babies were born by gaslight, lamplight, or the meter ran out in the middle of labour.

The setting is rich material for the Commedia dell’Arte tradition. The fever-ridden slums of Naples or the dark, sinister canals of mediaeval Venice could not be more redolent of atmosphere for drama and melodrama. Yet time and place alone are of limited interest. There can be no comedy or tragedy without people.

The Cockneys are the people I write about. I knew and loved them. I entered their crowded homes at the most intimate times of life – the birth of new babies. I saw their strengths and weaknesses, their open-heartedness and narrow prejudices, their humour and courage, their irresistible passion for enjoyment.

The book is teeming with unforgettable characters: Conchita and Len who produced twenty-five babies between them, the last one born prematurely in a London smog; Brenda who had rickets; Lilly who had syphilis; Molly, beaten up and on the game a fortnight after delivery; a breach delivery on Christmas day; Margaret, who died of eclampsia; Mary, a fourteen year-old Irish girl dragged into the seamy brothels of Cable Street (I am told that the strip show in a brothel is amongst my most powerful writing!); Fred, the boiler man at the Convent; and Mrs. Jenkins, who had spent eighteen years in the workhouse. And how does a white man deal with his wife (also white) after the birth of a half-black baby? How would any man react today? There are three such stories in Call the Midwife. We are not talking about an IVF error. This is not racism. This is adultery. This is the Commedia dell’Arte.

I have mentioned a convent. I worked with an order of nuns, heroic nuns who had been nursing in the slums of London since the 1870s, when no-one would go into those areas, except the police. The nuns are central to the book. They are saintly and wise, worldly and witty, sometimes infuriating, often eccentric. Sister Monica Joan’s verbal battles with Sister Evangelina are among the funniest things in the book, I am told.
The book is social history in story form. It is not a dull chronicle of events. It is about the living, breathing, suffering, laughing people whose lives were shaped by the docklands in which they lived fifty years ago.

As we grow older the days of our youth are illuminated by a golden glow that seems to grow ever brighter as the years pass. My memories of midwifery in Poplar approach high romance: the great cargo boats coming and going ceaselessly, with thousands of men entering the dock gates, loading and unloading; the pilots guiding a great white vessel as big as an iceberg through a narrow canal to her resting wharf; the constant deep-throated growls of the ships’ funnels and the shrill of the sirens. I recall the open-hearted friendliness of the people who lived cheerfully in grim conditions, who never locked their doors and who kept open house to just about everyone. I remember cycling home in the grey light of dawn when the docks were beginning to stir, my body tired after eighteen hours work, but my mind alight with the thrill of having achieved the safe delivery of a beautiful baby to a joyous mother.

And here's the trailer for the BBC series due in the New Year...

A Swift Pure Cry by Siobhan O'Dowd

An extraordinary story of one girl's courage in the face of prejudice and hardship within a small community in Ireland.

'Beautifully written and deeply moving.'

The Guardian

Jimmy and Trix were sleeping. Softly she drew the bottom bolt across the door, changed into her nightdress and got under the covers. She cuddled up to herself, listening to the sing-song breathing in the dark. Soon her mind was full of rainbows and lightning strikes... Father Rose was driving Jezabel over the cliff roads into the sky. Declan was tugging her by the arm to the top of Duggans' field. 'Would you, Shell, or wouldn't you?' She slept.

After Shell's mother dies, her obsessively religious father descends into alcoholic mourning and Shell is left to care for her younger brother and sister.

Her only release from the harshness of everyday life comes from her budding spiritual friendship with a naive young priest, and most importantly, her developing relationship with childhood friend, Declan, charming, eloquent and persuasive.

But when Declan suddenly leaves Ireland to seek his fortune in America, Shell finds herself pregnant and the centre of a scandal that rocks the small community in which she lives, with repercussions across the whole country.

The lives of those immediately around her will never be the same again.



About the Author

Human suffering frightens many people. Others, it ennobles and drives to action. The writer and human rights campaigner, Siobhan Dowd, who has died of cancer aged 47, was firmly in the latter category. A free spirit, with a zest for life, she was passionately committed to countering oppression and discrimination. She confronted the brutalities of the human condition head-on, with a rare blend of practical engagement and literary flair.

Click here to read The Guardian Obituary about this Carnegie prize winning author...

Click below to read The Guardian review

God and the Bottle - Jamila Gavin finds much to admire in Siobhan Dowd's story of sexual awakening, redemption and hope in 1980s Ireland...

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/

We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver

Winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction 2005

'This startling shocker strips bare motherhood... the most remarkable Orange prize victor so far' Polly Toynbee, Guardian

'One of the most striking works of fiction to be published this year... A powerful, gripping and original meditation on evil' New Statesman

What sort of a mother hates her own son? Eva Khatchadourian does. What she'd hoped for was someone to bear witness to her life and to give her and her husband Franklin something else to talk about. Perhaps she had Kevin for the wrong reasons, she reflects, because he is not at all what she wanted. There's something strange about the boy who wears nappies till the age of six, yet who is otherwise frighteningly precocious.

Kevin's behaviour progresses from destructive to malicious to murderous. His greatest skill is the ability to absent himself from the scene of a crime, but Franklin plays down Eva's suspicions and insists that they go on playing happy families. In some ways, Franklin's continued optimism in the face of the obvious is more sinister than Kevin's devious destructiveness. It is Franklin's deliberate blindness that prevents Kevin's sociopathic traits from being taken seriously - or was it, Eva wonders, her fault that one morning Kevin lures seven fellow students, a teacher and a cafeteria worker into his school gymnasium and picks them off one by one with the crossbow his father bought him for Christmas?

We Need to Talk About Kevin takes the form of a series of letters to Franklin after the murders and asks: were they such bad parents? Is the way that Kevin turned out their fault? Could things have been different? The novel is an elegant psychological and philosophical investigation of culpability with a brilliant denouement.

About the Author

At age seven, Lionel Shriver decided she would be a writer. In 1987, she made good on her promise with The Female of the Species, a debut novel that received admiring reviews. Shriver's five subsequent novels were also well-received; but it was her seventh, 2003's We Need to Talk About Kevin, that turned her into a household name.

A graduate of Columbia University, Shriver is also a respected journalist whose features, op-eds, and reviews have appeared in such publications as The Guardian, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, and the Economist. Since her breakthrough book, she has continued to produce bestselling fiction and gimlet-eyed journalism in equal measure.

Lionel Shriver talks about Kevin - How does it feel to have your widely rejected manuscript become a best-selling, prize-winning novel, then a book-club favourite and now the toast of the Cannes film festival? The author of We Need to Talk About Kevin explains here...

To read interviews with Lionel Shriver about this difficult and confrontational book, click on the links below

http://www.identitytheory.com/interviews/birnbaum118.php

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2003/oct/04/weekend7.weekend2

Al Capone Does My Shirts by Gennifer Choldenko

'Gennifer Choldenko is a bright light in ... teenage fiction, and Al Capone Does My Shirts is one of her best.' The Independent

'this engaging tale develops its characters subtly and skilfully' Sunday Times

When Moose Flanagan and his family move home and become residents of the famous prison island Alcatraz, things get interesting. First of all, they share the island with a few other families and a lot of pretty heavy-duty criminals including Al Capone. And secondly, Moose's sister is starting a new school, which everyone hopes will help her become more integrated with those around her. When Moose comes up with some pretty cunning money-making schemes based on his famous co-residents, he does not count on his sister becoming inadvertently involved. This is a charming, funny and utterly enchanting book that skillfully and delicately weaves a humorous tale with some important issues.

To find out about Gennifer Choldenko's other books and her time researching Alcatraz prison, click on the link to her website

http://http//www.choldenko.com/

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/

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

'Smart and mesmerising.' --New York Times

Winner of the John Newbery Medal 2010

'This puzzle of a novel will stay with the reader long after they have put the book down. Adults too will enjoy this extremely well-crafted and intriguing story.' -- The Evening Standard

`Beautifully and simply told despite the fact that the story they tell is complex and thought-provoking. This is a great book.' --Julia Eccleshare, LoveReading4Kids

Miranda's life is starting to unravel. Her best friend, Sal, gets punched by a kid on the street for what seems like no reason, and he shuts Miranda out of his life. The key that Miranda's mum keeps hidden for emergencies is stolen. And then a mysterious note arrives:
'I am coming to save your friend's life, and my own.
I ask two favours. First, you must write me a letter.'
The notes keep coming, and Miranda slowly realises that whoever is leaving them knows things no one should know. Each message brings her closer to believing that only she can prevent a tragic death. Until the final note makes her think she's too late.

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead – review - Philip Ardagh of The Guardian on a beautifully observed story of family and friends click below to read more...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/feb/05/booksforchildrenandteenagers-philip-ardagh

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

http://www.rebeccasteadbooks.com/index2.html

Case Histories by Kate Atkinson

'Her best book yet, an astonishingly complex and moving literary detective story that made me sob but also snort with laughter. It's the sort of novel you have to start rereading the minute you've finished it.' The Guardian

'NOT JUST THE BEST NOVEL I READ THIS YEAR BUT THE BEST MYSTERY OF THE DECADE.' Stephen King

'MORE DEPTH AND VIVIDNESS THAN ORDINARY THRILLERS AND MORE THRILLS THAN ORDINARY FICTION…A WONDERFULLY TRICKY BOOK.'
New York Times

Cambridge is sweltering, during an unusually hot summer. To Jackson Brodie, former police inspector turned private investigator, the world consists of one accounting sheet – Lost on the left, Found on the right – and the two never seem to balance.

Jackson has never felt at home in Cambridge, and has a failed marriage to prove it. Surrounded by death, intrigue and misfortune, his own life haunted by a family tragedy, he attempts to unravel three disparate case histories and begins to realise that in spite of apparent diversity, everything is connected…

Case Histories continues a winning streak for Kate Atkinson which began when her impressive novel Behind the Scenes at the Museum won the Whitbread First Novel Award. Since that book, Atkinson has gleaned a keen following of readers who are prepared to follow in the surprising directions the unpredictable author takes us on. And Atkinson--so far--hasn’t let us down.

The perfectly judged prose that distinguished Human Croquet is fully in evidence in Case Histories, and a new frisson here comes from the genre-stretching that Atkinson is indulging in. In some ways, this book could almost be seen as a new take on the crime novel (not the first genre one would expect the author to tackle), but the crime elements here Atkinson uses are peripheral. The protagonist here is a former police inspector who now makes a living as a private investigator. Jackson Brodie is making ends meet in a sweaty Cambridge summer and trying to deal with his own failed marriage. But if his life is adrift, perhaps Brodie can justify his existence via his belief that he can do some good for the people he encounters in his job. But he is to find that he will be irrevocably changed by those he is trying to help.
 
As a vividly created cast of characters surround the beleaguered Brodie, all the novelistic skills that shone in Atkinson's earlier books are fully in play. Those deluded into thinking they've picked up something resembling a standard private eye novel will find something much more rich and strange; Atkinson goes from strength to strength. Barry Forshaw

A writer's life: Kate Atkinson - An author known for her dark, funny stories of domestic life tells Helen Brown why she has now written a crime novel with a male hero...

About the Author

Kate Atkinson was born in York in 1951 and studied English Literature at Dundee University. After graduating in 1974, she researched a postgraduate doctorate on American Literature. She later taught at Dundee and began writing short stories in 1981. She began writing for women's magazines after winning the 1986 Woman's Own Short Story Competition. She was runner-up for the Bridport Short Story Prize in 1990 and won an Ian St James Award in 1993 for her short-story "Karmic Mothers", which she later adapted for BBC2 television as part of its 'Tartan Shorts' series.

Her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum (1995), won the 1995 Whitbread Book of the Year award, beating Salman Rushdie's The Moor's Last Sigh and Roy Jenkins' biography Gladstone. The book is set in Yorkshire, narrated by Ruby Lennox, who takes the reader through the complex history of her family, covering the events of the twentieth century and reaching back into the past to uncover the lives of distant ancestors. The book has been adapted for radio and theatre and has been adapted for television by the author. Her second novel, Human Croquet, was published in 1997 and relates the story of another family, the Fairfaxes, through flashback and historical narrative. Her third novel, Emotionally Weird, was published in 2000, and in 2002 a collection of short stories, Not the End of the World.

Kate Atkinson has written two plays for the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh: a short play, Nice (1996), and Abandonment, which premiered as part of the Edinburgh Festival in August 2000. She currently lives in Edinburgh and is an occasional contributor to newspapers and magazines.  Her latest books are Case Histories (2004), One Good Turn (2006), shortlisted for the British Book Awards Crime Thriller of the Year, When Will There be Good News? (2008) and Started Early, Took My Dog (2010), all four forming a crime series featuring ex-policeman Jackson Brodie.

To find out more about the author and her other books click here...

Rowan the Strange by Julie Hearn

Hearn is skilled at conveying the place and the time, but it is in the detail of human interactions that her novel is particularly remarkable. The Sunday Times

Rowan the Strange works perfectly as a strangely beautiful...story. It is nothing short of extraordinary.

The Guardian

How does a doctor examine a person's brain?

They won't use any knives on me, will they?

Rowan knows he is strange. But dangerous?

He didn't mean to scare his sister. In his right mind, he wouldn't hurt a fly.

But there's a place he can go where they say they can fix his mind . . .

Beyond the bars on the window, England is at war.

Behind them, Rowan's own battle is only just beginning.

This amazing story gives a thought-provoking look at life in an asylum and the experimental treatments practised at the start of the Second World War. For Rowan, nobody could ever have predicted the effect these treatments would have...

Shock and war - Philip Ardagh is drawn into an extraordinary tale of medical experimentation...

About the Author


At the age of eight, Julie wrote her first novel about a psychedelic dragon who longed to be plain green or brown. Sadly her teacher didn't have time to read the story and Julie vowed never to write anything that ambitious again!

Julie went on to become a journalist. She wrote for a daily newspaper in Australia, then lived in Spain for a while, before returning to England and working as a features editor and 'mother and baby' columnist. In 1994, Julie started a degree in Education, but switched to English when she realized teaching wasn't for her.

She then went on to complete a Master of Studies at Oxford University in Women's Studies, but found academia creatively restrictive. An idea for her Masters thesis became her inspiration for Follow Me Down.  Julie lives in Oxfordshire and has one daughter, Tilly.

To find out more about the author click here to go to her website...

Listen to the author talk about Rowan the Strange...

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.

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

Want to know where that myth of Oxbridge being all about dreaming spires, youthful indiscretion and aristocratic decadence was confirmed? Well, it all started here...

"It is a long time since I read Brideshead Revisited. I found myself hooked from page one. It felt like coming upon some delicious, unexpected selection of treats left over in a glutton's larder." A.N. Wilson

"Waugh's most deeply felt novel . . . Brideshead Revisited tells an absorbing story in imaginative terms . . . Mr. Waugh is very definitely an artist, with something like a genius for precision and clarity not surpassed by any novelist writing in English in his time." The New York Times

'I have been here before,' I said; I had been there before; first with Sebastian more than twenty years ago on a cloudless day in June, when the ditches were creamy with meadowsweet and the air heavy with all the scents of summer ; it was a day of peculiar splendour, and though I had been there so often, in so many moods, it was to that first visit that my heart returned on this, my latest... 

The most nostalgic and reflective of Evelyn Waugh's novels, Brideshead Revisited looks back to the golden age before the Second World War.

It tells the story of Charles Ryder's infatuation with the Marchmains and the rapidly-disappearing world of privilege they inhabit.

Enchanted first by Sebastian at Oxford, then by his doomed Catholic family, in particular his remote sister, Julia, Charles comes finally to recognize only his spiritual and social distance from them.

"A many-faceted book . . . Beautifully [written] by one of the most exhilarating stylists of our time." Newsweek

About the Author

Evelyn Waugh was born in Hampstead in 1903, second son of Arthur Waugh, publisher and literary critic, and brother of Alec Waugh, the popular novelist. He was educated at Lancing and Hertford College, Oxford, where he read Modern History.

In 1928 he published his first work, a life of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and his first novel, Decline and Fall, which was soon followed by Vile Bodies (1930), Black Mischief (1932), A Handful of Dust (1934) and Scoop (1938). During these years he travelled extensively in most parts of Europe, the Near East, Africa and tropical America, and published a number of travel books, including Labels (1930), Remote People, (1931), Ninety-Two Days (1934) and Waugh in Abyssinia (1936).

In 1939 he was commissioned in the Royal Marines and later transferred to the Royal Horse Guards, serving in the Middle East and in Yugoslavia. In 1942 he published Put Out More Flags and then in 1945 Brideshead Revisited. When the Going was Good and The Loved One preceded Men at Arms, which came out in 1952, the first volume of 'The Sword of Honour' trilogy, and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. The other volumes, Officers and Gentlemen and Unconditional Surrender, followed in 1955 and 1961.

In 1964 he published his last book, A Little Learning, the first volume of an autobiography. Evelyn Waugh was received into the Roman Catholic Church in 1930 and his biography of the Elizabethan Jesuit martyr, Edmund Campion, was awarded the Hawthornden Prize in 1936. In 1959 he published the official Life of Ronald Knox. For many years he lived with his wife and six children in the West Country. He died in 1966.

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...

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...

The Crowstarver by Dick King-Smith

Dick King-Smith has published over 100 books, and still he comes up with the goods. The Crowstarver tells the story of Spider, a foundling brought up by a childless shepherd and his wife in Gloucestershire in the days before the second world war. This is King-Smith in a more sombre and reflective mood than usual, but his love of the land and the people who work it is strong and deep.

Young Spider is different from other boys; he's handicapped both mentally and physically. But he has a marvellous affinity with animals of every sort. A crowstarver is someone who scares crows away from the growing corn, and Spider is the best crowstarver there ever was; and in his understanding and love of all animals, even the croaks, as he calls them, he finds fulfilment.

There's a warmth in this book, a profound understanding of the cycle of birth and death, and a wisdom that knows that big things like joy and wonder are often found in little things like robins and Liquorice Allsorts and penknives. Philip Pullman

Like many another tale set in the pre-war rural world of the English countryside, The Crowstarver tells about a close-knit farming community and the ways of animals and birds. But this is a story of country life with a difference. Joy comes to a childless shepherd and his wife when a baby found lying in the straw of a sheep pen becomes their very own child. As he grows up it becomes clear that Spider is not "normal". Although he can't think or speak like other children, he can understand and communicate with animals.

In this deceptively simple story the ordinary and the natural are transfused with the extraordinary and the wonderful. The tale has elements of a fairy story and yet remains rooted in a realistically described, historically accurate, everyday world. The combination of elements creates a powerful, poignant, thought-provoking read for all 9 to 11-year-olds. Tamsin Palmer

About the Author

Dick King-Smith was a Gloucestershire farmer until the age of 45, when he gave up farming to become a primary school teacher.

Now a bestselling full-time author, his work has received many awards including a Bronze Medal for the Smarties Prize of 1997 for All Because of Jackson and the Children's Book Award in 1995 for Harriet's Hare. In 1992, he was also voted Children's Author of the Year.

In 1995, his top-selling title The Sheep-Pig was developed into a box-office movie, BABE, introducing hundreds of thousands of youngsters to his work.

Framed by Frank Cottrell Boyce

Dylan is the only boy living in the tiny Welsh town of Manod. His parents run the Snowdonia Oasis Auto Marvel garage - and when he's not trying to persuade his sisters to play football, Dylan is in charge of the petrol log. And that means he gets to keep track of everyone coming in and out of Manod - what car they drive, what they're called, even their favourite flavour of crisps.

But when a mysterious convoy of lorries trundles up the misty mountainside towards an old, disused mine, even Dylan is confounded. Who are these people - and what have they got to hide?

A story inspired by a press cutting describing how, during WWII, the treasured contents of London's National Gallery were stored in Welsh slate mines. Once a month, a morale-boosting masterpiece would be unveiled in the village and then returned to London for viewing. This is a funny and touching exploration of how Art - its beauty and its value - touches the life of one little boy and his big family in a very small town.

Want to read The Guardian review? Click here...

The screenwriter is amazed that he won the Carnegie medal for his first children's book, Millions, he tells Helen Brown.

The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot

Tuesday, September 23.

Sometimes it seems like all I ever do is lie.
My mom thinks I'm repressing my feelings about this. I say to her, 'No, Mom, I'm not. I think it's really neat. As long as you're happy, I'm happy.'
 
Mom says, 'I don't think you're being honest with me.'
Then she hands me this book. She tells me she wants me to write down my feelings in this book, since, she says, I obviously don't feel I can talk about them with her.
 
She wants me to write down my feelings? OK, I'll write down my feelings:
 
I CAN'T BELIEVE SHE'S DOING THIS TO ME!
 
Like everybody doesn't already think I'm a freak. I'm practically the biggest freak in the entire school. I mean, let's face it: I'm five foot nine, flat-chested, and a freshman. How much more of a freak could I be?

If people at school find out about this, I'm dead. That's it. Dead.

Oh, God, if you really do exist, please don't let them find out about this.

There are four million people in Manhattan, right? That makes about two million of them guys. So out of TWO MILLION guys, she has to go out with Mr Gianini. She can't go out with some guy I don't know. She can't go out with some guy she met at D'Agostino's or wherever. Oh, no.
She has to go out with my Algebra teacher.
Thanks, Mom. Thanks a whole lot.
Wednesday, September 24, Fifth Period
Lilly's like, 'Mr Gianini's cool.'
Yeah, right. He's cool if you're Lilly Moscovitz. He's cool if you're good at Algebra, like Lilly Moscovitz. He's not so cool if you're flunking Algebra, like me.
 
He's not so cool if he makes you stay after school EVERY SINGLE SOLITARY DAY from 2:30 to 3:30 to practise the FOIL method when you could be hanging out with all your friends. He's not so cool if he calls your mother in for a parent/teacher conference to talk about how you're flunking Algebra, then ASKS HER OUT.
 
And he's not so cool if he's sticking his tongue in your mom's mouth.
Not that I've actually seen them do this. They haven't even been out on their first proper date yet. And I don't think my mom would let a guy put his tongue in her mouth on the first date.
At least, I hope not.
 
I saw Josh Richter stick his tongue in Lana Weinberger's mouth last week. I had this totally close-up view of it, since they were leaning up against Josh's locker, which is right next to mine. It kind of grossed me out.
Though I can't say I'd mind if Josh Richter kissed me like that. The other day Lilly and I were at Bigelow's picking up some alpha hydroxy for Lilly's mom, and I noticed Josh waiting at the check-out counter. He saw me and he actually sort of smiled and said, 'Hey.'
 
He was buying Drakkar Noir, a men's cologne. I got a free sample of it from the salesgirl. Now I can smell Josh whenever I want to, in the privacy of my own home.
 
Lilly says Josh's synapses were probably misfiring that day, due to heatstroke or something. She said he probably thought I looked familiar, but couldn't place my face without the cement block walls of Albert Einstein High behind me. Why else, she asked, would the most popular senior in high school say hey to me, Mia Thermopolis, a lowly freshman?
 
But I know it wasn't heatstroke. The truth is, when he's away from Lana and all his jock friends, Josh is a totally different person. The kind of person who doesn't care if a girl is flat-chested or wears size eight shoes. The kind of person who can see beyond all that, into the depths of a girl's soul. I know because when I looked into his eyes that day at Bigelow's, I saw the deeply sensitive person inside him, struggling to get out.
Lilly says I have an overactive imagination and a pathological need to invent drama in my life. She says the fact that I'm so upset about my mom and Mr G is a classic example.
 
'If you're that upset about it, just tell your mom,' Lilly says. 'Tell her you don't want her going out with him. I don't understand you, Mia. You're always going around, lying about how you feel. Why don't you just assert yourself for a change. Your feelings have worth, you know.'
 
Oh, right. Like I'm going to bum my mom out like that. She's so totally happy about this date, it's enough to make me want to throw up. She goes around cooking all the time. I'm not even kidding. She made pasta for the first time last night in, like, months. I had already opened the Suzie's Chinese take-out menu, and she says, 'Oh, no cold sesame noodles tonight, honey. I made pasta.'
 
Pasta! My mom made pasta!
 
She even observed my rights as a vegetarian and didn't put any meatballs in the sauce.
 
I don't understand any of this.
Things to Do:
1. Buy cat litter.
2. Finish FOIL worksheet for Mr G.
3. Stop telling Lilly everything
4. Go to Pearl Paint: get soft lead pencils, spray mount, canvas stretchers (for Mom).
5. World Civ. report on Iceland (5 pages, double space).
6. Stop thinking so much about Josh Richter.
7. Drop off laundry.
8. October rent (make sure Mom has deposited Dad's cheque!!!).
9. Be more assertive.

About the Author

THE PRINCESS DIARIES series is phenomenally successful having topped the US and UK best-seller lists for weeks and won several awards. Two movies based on the series have been massively popular throughout the world. Meg Cabot is also the author of the bestselling ALL AMERICAN GIRL books, TEEN IDOL, AVALON HIGH, NICOLA AND THE VISCOUNT and THE MEDIATOR series as well as several other books for teenagers and adults.

To find out more about the novel and the other books in the series click here...

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole by Sue Townsend

At thirteen years old, Adrian Mole has more than his fair share of problems - spots, ill-health, parents threatening to divorce, rejection of his poetry and much more - all recorded with brilliant humour in his diary.

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾ is an unabashed, pimples-and-all glimpse into the troubled life of an adolescent.

Writing candidly about his parents’ marital troubles, the dog, his life as a tortured poet and ‘misunderstood intellectual’, teenager Adrian Mole’s painfully honest diary makes hilarious and compelling reading.

To find out more about the Adrian Mole series of books click here...

The Blood Stone by Jamila Gavin

Filippo has never seen his father.

Before he was born, his father left their home in Venice to travel to the court of the Great Mogul Emperor Shah Jehan.

He never returned. Twelve years later, a stranger brings a message that Filippo's father is in the hands of bandits, and only the most valuable jewel, his masterpiece The Ocean of the Moon, is worth enough to raise his ransom.

Filippo follows his father's journey, into the intrigue of the Emperor's court, where Prince Aurangzeb plot to overthrow Shah Jehan.

 Filippo travels on into Afghanistan, to the bandit stronghold, and at last rescues his father. But it's too late. His father has been driven mad by his captivity and dies on the journey home. Filippo can hardly bear his loss, but finds his sadness healed when, years later, he returns to Hindustan with his brother.

The Taj Mahal is a replica of The Ocean of the Moon; their father's work has not been in vain.