Teens
Darkness Falls by Mia James
April's not had the best time of it lately. First her family up and moved her clear across the country and sent her to an exclusive college full of the smartest (and apparently most beautiful) kids in the country. Then, while April was struggling to fit in, she discovered Ravenwood school's terrible secret - it's run by vampires. Full review...
Ten Things We Shouldn't Have Done by Sarah Mlynowski
April doesn't want to move to Cleveland with her dad and his new wife. She doesn't want to move to Paris with her mum either. So April decides the best thing to do is to move in with her best friend Vi, and Vi's mum. But, Vi's mum has recently landed herself the role as Mary Poppins in a travelling theatre, so she's not going to be home. That's not going to stop April from staying in Westport, armed with a couple of fake emails addresses the plan is set. Full review...
CRYPT: The Gallows Curse by Andrew Hammond
A warning: do not begin to read this book while eating your lunch, as this unfortunate reviewer did. There's nothing quite like the description of people in an underground train being ripped apart, then having their faces chewed off by bugs, to put you off your egg and cress. In fact, you may develop a strong aversion to the whole of London Transport by the time you've finished this book, which will definitely not please Uncle Boris. Full review...
Prized (Birthmarked) by Caragh M O'Brien
The Cool Age - our age - is long gone. Few people made it and those that did now live in isolated communities. Gaia Stone, a young midwife, has just escaped from the Enclave, where genetic manipulation has both saved and condemned the select few. The rest live in poverty. Lost in the wasteland, Gaia and her baby sister Maya are rescued by Peter, an outranger from another settlement, Sylum. Full review...
Naked by Kevin Brooks
Lili is a quiet student, not hip or trendy or in demand, and she spends most of her time playing the piano. She's an unlikely candidate for the nascent punk scene but Curtis Ray, the school's charismatic bad boy, doesn't agree. He recruits Lili to his band Naked, and it's not long before Lili gets naked with Curtis in more ways than one. As the band begins to make a name for itself on the burgeoning punk scene, fame-obsessed Curtis gets drawn further and further in and his drug-fuelled behaviour becomes more and more erratic. Full review...
Ruby Rocksparkle: Her Wildly Incredible Adventure by Jean Clemens Loftus
Ruby Rocksparkle and her thirteen - yes! thirteen! - siblings are all named after gemstones. Ruby's father is a peasant farmer in the happy little kingdom of Felicitania. Felicitania is ruled by the kingly King Flavian and his beautiful second wife, Queen Morgana. His son, Prince Alano, is busily preparing for the day when he must rule, and the time for him to find a wife is fast approaching. Ruby, a vivid, read-headed beauty, dreams of marrying Prince Alano. If only he could ever marry a commoner - but even Ruby knows that could never be. Full review...
Mister Creecher by Chris Priestley
Ooh, ooh - two Frankenstein-related books one after the other! More of that in the further reading at the end. Mr Creecher isn't a retelling, a sequel or a prequel; it's an interlude, set midway through the events of Mary Shelley's novel.
It's Regency London, the Industrial Revolution is beginning to crank up, and Billy is an orphan and pickpocket trying to survive in the grimy streets. About to rob what he thinks is a corpse, Billy is set upon by some acquaintances to whom he owes money. Before Fletcher's knife prises out Billy's eye, the corpse - not a corpse at all, in case you didn't guess - comes to his rescue. This huge, shambling man is not a pretty sight. But he has a job for Billy. Mr Creecher has come to London on the trail of Victor Frankenstein, with whom he has a bargain. And he needs Billy to follow Frankenstein to make sure he doesn't renege on the deal. Full review...
Verity Fibbs by Cathy Brett
Verity Fibbs is the daughter of fashion designer Saffron Fibbs. Saffron's brought her up on her own and made a pretty good job of it without a lot of input from Verity's 'bio-dad'. Verity's used to the celebrity lifestyle although Saffron does her best to keep her feet firmly on the ground, with or without coffee suede boots. The latest buzz is that Saff and Eden Greenfield are dating – it's even trending on Twitter – and Verity is getting texts asking if the fashion magnate is going to be her new Dad. When Vee wants to retreat from all this she plays an online game called Demon Streets, although she's obviously not addicted. Before long she's going to find that she's playing the game against a real, live villain. Full review...
Number the Stars by Lois Lowry
Copenhagen, 1943, and everyone from schoolgirls like Annemarie up are suffering from shortages, fear and loathing - all caused by Nazi occupiers. But it's always been an open country, has Denmark, and no less than the King takes a daily horse ride, protected in plain view by every single loyal subject. But when, on the Jewish New Year, word gets out that Jews will have to be hidden more discretely, things kick into action. Annemarie and her family take her best friend, Ellen, to the country for safety. But it seems death will even follow them there... Full review...
This Dark Endeavour by Kenneth Oppel
Victor and Konrad Frankenstein are twins, born just two minutes apart. They look alike but their personalities couldn't be more different. Konrad is calm, assured and capable. People like him. Victor is intense and arrogant with a burning ambition. He rubs people up the wrong way more often than not. The twins live with their beautiful, sometimes wayward, cousin Elizabeth and the three are educated alongside great friend and wordsmith Henry. It's a charmed life in the Frankenstein chateau in the Genevese republic. Full review...
The Goddess Test by Aimee Carter
When Kate's mother makes a dying wish to return to her home town, Eden, Kate drops what's left of her life and goes with her. She doesn't want to make friends – she's here for her mum and nothing else – so she's not very interested when popular girl Ava, with her jock boyfriend Dylan, invites her to a party. Full review...
Wave Hunter: The Book of Water by Beth Webb
As the Iron Age comes to a close, Romans are sweeping across the British countryside destroying anyone who stands in their way. The druids are a particular target - the Romans understand all too well that the society they seek to subdue revolves around its religion and its sacred places. Tegen is determined to stop them. As the Star Dancer, the young druid girl's destiny is to avert a great evil, and she believes that evil is the Roman invasion. Full review...
Far Rockaway by Charlie Fletcher
Cat Manno and her grandfather Victor have a long-held ambition: to one day take the subway and ride it right the way to the very end, to Far Rockaway. Just for the sheer hell of it. But when the day comes, Cat's brother doesn't show. This is more than a disappointment to Cat - it's an utter betrayal. She needed Joe on the trip because she has a guilty secret. She hasn't read the latest book Victor gave her - he sends her a classic adventure every year on her birthday - and she knows he'll want to discuss as it they ride the train. Without Joe, Cat has no chance of concealing her sin. Full review...
Velvet by Mary Hooper
The opening chapter of this book is a roller-coaster of a read. Velvet has fainted while doing back-breaking, gruelling work in a laundry, and risks being sent to the workhouse. Quick thinking saves her job, and the reader relaxes, only to learn a shocking and shameful secret about the heroine we have already begun to like. Her fortunes soon change, in true Dickensian style, but her troubles are not over: this same secret will come back to haunt her (please excuse the pun) and put her in the power of one of the other characters. Full review...
Dust & Decay by Jonathan Maberry
Dust & Decay picks up the action six months after Rot & Ruin's climactic battle with Charlie Pink-eye and the Motor City Hammer. Benny and his friends have spent the time honing their self-defence and zombie-killing skills through some very intense training by Tom. And now, the time is finally right. They're about to head back out into the Ruin in search of the jet plane they saw in the sky after the battle at Gameland. There might, just might, be a real civilisation surviving somewhere on the continent. Full review...
D4rk Inside by Jeyn Roberts
4. Earthquakes shudder across the world.
3. SOMETHING is released.
2. Trust no one - not even yourself.
1. The killing game has begun...
Full review...
Maphead by Lesley Howarth
MapHead and his father Ran are of the Subtle World. Ran can travel through time, make things disappear and erase human memories. MapHead can flash the map of any place across his face and bald scalp. MapHead is a halfling and now he is almost 12, Ran has brought him to meet his human mother. As they need to pass for humans, they've taken new names - Boothe and Powers, from a random movie - practised their English, and enrolled MapHead at the same school as his half-brother. Full review...
The Alien in the Garage and Other Stories by Rob Keeley
Would aliens like custard creams? Can fake tan hide a big lie? Are TV remotes sinister objects? Do secrets make you popular?
Rob Keeley explores all these questions and more in a super collection of slightly spooky, blackly comic short stories. They're beautifully observed and you can see that Rob knows children well. He has the emotional landscape exactly right and is equally accurate when describing - and sometimes gently mocking - peer relationships. Full review...
Haunted by Susan Cooper, Joseph Delaney, Berlie Doherty, Jamila Gavin, Matt Haig, Robin Jarvis, Derek Landy, Sam Llewellyn, Mal Peet, Philip Reeve and Eleanor Updale
I've always enjoyed a good ghost story – whether at a sleepover when I was a teenager, or even now reading horror stories in bed in the middle of the night. As soon as I saw this book I knew I wanted to read it, and it did not disappoint; a group of excellent authors from all genres have come together and the result is a collection of brilliant stories not to be missed by any ghost hunters out there. Full review...
A Long, Long Sleep by Anna Sheehan
This is a book set in the future, with hover-cars and eye-scans and travel to other planets. But make no mistake – that's not what this book is about. Sixteen-year-old Rose has been asleep for far longer than she intended; in the meantime the world has almost come to an end in a terrible plague, and her stasis tube has been abandoned in a basement. If Brendan had not come exploring, she might never have been found at all. But how is that possible? How could the daughter and heiress of the most powerful couple in the galaxy have been forgotten? This book is about her awakening, and the slow, painful unfurling of the real facts of her early life. Full review...
Hartslove by K M Grant
1861, Epsom. A young lad, Garth, is at the start of the biggest horse race in the land, astride The One, an ungainly but lightning-fast three year old who had never been ridden until just months ago. At the side of the track, Garth's five sisters, and friends, are willing him on. How can this young jockey win the race, upon which the fate of their castle home and so much more depends? And what are we to learn after the prologue that sets all this out, that would make us want him to NOT win? Full review...
The Hollow: The Hidden by Jessica Verday
Abbey loves Caspian more than ever, and with her death apparentlyapproaching, she knows they will be able to be together forever soon. But why is he growing so distant? Is there something the revenants who are protecting her aren't telling her? And can anyone keep her safe from the rogue revenant Vincent, who attacked her previously? Full review...
Emerald by Karen Wallace
Emerald and her brother Richard never understood why her father decided that after his death they would go and live with their uncle and aunt at Hawkstone Hall, even though their mother was still alive. Still, she had always been a cold woman, more interested in profit than people, and they soon forgot her. Until, that is, the day she wrote to Uncle Charles saying that Emerald was to marry Lord Suckley, and that he was already on his way to the Hall to inspect his new bride. Full review...
Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor
Karou's friends think she's normal. They assume, however often she tells them that her bright blue hair grows that colour, that she dyes it. They think her frequent errands are just normal everyday things to earn money. They believe the snake-bodied being she draws in her sketchbook is a figment of her imagination. They're wrong. Full review...
The Drake Chronicles: Bleeding Hearts by Alyxandra Harvey
Things in Violet Hill are not looking good at the moment. The small town is practically over run by the vicious Hel-Blar vampires: not the civilised, friendly (and hot) variety that Lucy is used too – these are feral, and attack indiscriminately, humans and vampires alike. Full review...
The Hidden Kingdom by Ian Beck
Prince Osamu is a pampered, spoiled young orphan who has never known friends his own age or been told what to do. He spends his life surrounded by beauty and riches in a world where most people do not even dare to raise their eyes to his face, collecting the exquisite pots made by Master Masumi and writing poems. His tutors have told him about the demons of Hades which try, every few centuries, to break through the barrier and take over this world, and that it is his responsibility to repel them, but he dismisses all this as old wives' tales. And then one night the forces of the Emissary attack the palace, and every certainty he had is gone in a flash. Full review...
The Double Shadow by Sally Gardner
In 1937 Amaryllis Ruben is about to turn seventeen. As a present, her father, Arnold Ruben, a widowed, multi-millionaire, is going to give his daughter his life long work, an invention that could alter time forever, a memory machine. It can capture the good, erase the bad, and keep you young for all time. But things aren't going to plan; apart from Amaryllis not wanting it, other people have taken an interest, and not in a good way. Full review...
Glow by Amy Kathleen Ryan
Everyone expected Kieran and Waverley to be together. As the first of the first generation born in space, it seemed almost written in the stars. Destiny. Waverley is mostly happy with her life on board the Empyrean – one of two ships trailblazing across the universe to New Earth, where their crews will start a new human frontier – she loves Kieran (she thinks) and the ship's crew is like one big happy family. But sometimes, she wonders if her life would be different, if her choices would be different, if the weight of continuing the human race didn't rest on her shoulders. Full review...
Fury (Fury Trilogy) by Elizabeth Miles
Both the central characters in Fury have dark secrets. Em is in love with her best friend's boyfriend. So when Gabby goes away on a winter holiday and Zach starts flirting with her, Em just can't resist even though she knows she's doing something unforgivable. Chase lives on a trailer park but runs with a rich crowd. He'll do just about anything to maintain his place in the group - and there's something he has done to that end of which he's deeply ashamed. But their small American town has come to the notice of three otherworldly sisters. The Furies have come to Ascension and Em and Chase are about to discover that feeling guilty isn't the only price they'll be paying for their misdeeds... Full review...
Life, Death and Gold Leather Trousers by Fiona Foden
Despite having not seen her uncle Jupe, the famous former rock star, for several years after he fell out with her mother, Clover is still devastated by his death. So when her parents split up the day after she turns thirteen, and her father runs off with a nude model, she doesn't think things can get any worse. Can she cope with the fallout of the split, look after kid sister Lily, and get to know cute fellow guitarist Riley better? Or will her rival Sophie Skelling's teeny crochet bikini tempt him away from her? Full review...
Bitter in the Mouth by Monique Truong
Linda Hammerick, a young girl growing up in North Carolina in the late 1970's, is different. She suffers from synesthesia, tasting things when she speaks or hears words. She grows up with her great-uncle, Baby Harper, as her best friend, as his singsong voice is the only one she can hear without the accompanying tastes, and writes letters back and forth with her best friend Kelly rather than have long conversations with her. Full review...
Wickedness by Deborah White
Claire's grandmother has just died. And her parents have just split up. So it's not really a good time. Mum is being even more of a pain than usual - endlessly cross, endlessly cleaning, endlessly combing Gran's belongings for anything of value - and Claire wants nothing more than to go home to her own house and her own things. But then she finds a letter addressed to her from her grandmother. It contains a sheaf of manuscripts and a ring inscribed with a hieroglyph. Once on Claire's finger, the ring gets stuck - much to her mother's annoyance. It could be worth a pretty penny to the rather sinister Egyptologist who's interested in buying some of Gran's possessions. Full review...
There Is No Dog by Meg Rosoff
Ok. Imagine God is actually a teenage immortal, much in the vein of teenage humans. He rushes his coursework (creation) and while there are flashes of brilliance and potential in it, there's no real thought or organisation and so the whole thing doesn't really work properly. But God is too busy having a lie-in or lusting after buxom young women to be ironing out these sorts of boring creases in the making of a successful planet. Full review...
Shadows at Stonewylde by Kit Berry
When we last left Stonewylde, the community seemed to be on the verge of a period of glorious prosperity and happiness as Yul became the new Magus and Sylvie joined him as guardians of Stonewylde. Thirteen years have passed, and Stonewylde is almost unrecognisable; it hasn't quite succumbed to the Outside World yet, but just how much longer can it remain self-sufficient and resistant to the consumerism and pervasive technology that is characteristic of the rest of the country? Furthermore, the cracks that begin to appear in Yul's and Sylvie's relationship are branching out throughout the whole community, with malcontent brewing, cruelty going unchecked, and sinister hints of a dark presence returning to Stonewylde. Full review...
Heist Society by Ally Carter
A new series from the creator of the Gallagher Girls? Excellent! And this book doesn't disappoint: young people with unusual and highly specialised skills, encountering bad guys and peril with determination and a healthy dose of humour. So, what's the difference from the 'Gallagher Girls'? Well, this time, the heroine and her crew are, um, to put it bluntly, the villains! Except that it's just not that simple. Kat comes from a large family of burglars and art thieves, but she decides she's had enough of the family business and wants a normal life. Sadly, someone else decides that's not going to happen. They should have told her, using your criminal abilities to forge a false identity and get yourself into the best boarding school in the country is not the best way to go straight. Full review...
Boys for Beginners by Lil Chase
Gwynnie has always been one of the guys which was fine...until Charlie Notts showed up at school. He's Hot (capital H) and friendly and likes football, but when Gwynnie realises he's firmly putting her on his list of mates, not girls, action must be taken. The thing is, for a girl whose close family and friends are all blokes, and whose one life love to date wasn't so much a trouser shape as a team (Go Spurs!), it's going to be a big jump from being one of the guys to bagging one of the guys. Full review...
Burglar Boy by Jackie Martin
Burglar Boy opens with a big scene - Dean is halfway though robbing a house when the owner returns. Chased by an irate man with a good aim and a golf club, he barely makes it out in one piece. But he dutifully returns home and divvies up a pile of ill-gotten goods to Callum, his older brother, who rewards him for the risk and the bruises with a paltry fiver. Still, it's more pocket money than Dean is likely to see from his mother, who has lapsed further and further into a bottle of vodka since her most recent boyfriend left. Full review...
Lottie Biggs is (Not) Tragic by Hayley Long
Lottie can’t understand what’s going on with the women around her. Goose has got the hots for a fellow cinema employee with a name which, spelt backwards, is rather unfortunate. Her mum has fallen for the bloke who arrested Lottie back in book one, and HIS daughter is a scary emo girl. There’s only one thing to be done… road trip! The central trio of Lottie, Goose, and Lottie’s hunky rugby playing boyfriend Gareth hightail it out of Cardiff – but can a change of scenery really solve the problems? Full review...
Rebel Angels: Bloodstone by Gillian Philip
Seth and Conal MacGregor have spent so long hunting for the Bloodstone for Kate NicNiven, their queen, that they're reached the present day in our world (after Firebrand took place in sixteenth century Scotland.) They still haven't found it, though, but they have got themselves involved with some wonderful new characters, notably sullen teenager Finn, who's unaware of her Sithe heritage but about to find out with far-reaching consequences. Returning to the realm of the fairies with her in tow, and two others, the MacGregor boys are about to find even more trouble. Full review...
The True Tale of the Monster Billy Dean by David Almond
This tale is told by 1 that died at birth by 1 that came into the world in days of endles war & at the moment of disaster... I am not cleva, so forgiv my folts and my mistayks. I am Billy Dean. This is the truth. This is my tale.
The Monster Billy Dean tells the story of Billy, a boy born into the dystopia of a war-torn town and the product of an illicit liaison between a young woman and her priest. His birth coincided with an apocalyptic bombing and his parents have hidden him away from the ruins and the catastrophe in a single room, both out of shame and in the belief that his coming into the world and surviving at such a violent moment signifies a sacred future. Full review...