**THE SHAPE WAS A MAN.WILL GRASPED HIS LEFT ARM ANDTRIED TO HAUL HIM UP ONTO THE RIVERBANK.THE BALD HEAD, THROWN BACK, TRAILED GRAY,WISPY STRAGGLES OF HAIR.THE DEAD MOUTH HUNG OPEN,A BLACK GAP IN THE PALE BLUR OF FACE,AND THE EYES SEEMED TO BE OPEN TOO.EVEN IN THE DARKNESS I KNEW THAT TERRIBLE FACE,FOR I HAD SEEN IT EARLIER THAT DAYAS IT WRITHED IN ANGER.IT WAS THE FACE OF OLD FARMER SPEIGHT,AND...

The play’s the thing . . .To the outside world, Tom Pryne is an orphan traveling Elizabethan England with his uncle’s theater troupe. In actuality, “Tom” is Viola, in disguise because her parents’ Catholic sympathies have put them at odds with the Crown and forced them into hiding. When the troupe arrives in the sleepy little town of Stratford-on-Avon, Viola’s uncle is arrested for murder, and she joins forces with an irksome local boy, named Will Shakespeare, with...

The year is 1597. Elizabeth is queen. Shakespeare and the Lord Chamberlain’s Men are packing London’s Globe Theatre. And the severed heads of Catholic insurgents are impaled on the Tower’s gates. One 14-year-old boy should arouse no one’s interest.But within a week of his arrival, Richard Malory is robbed, beaten, and threatened at knifepoint. Someone wants him to leave London, and Richard is determined to find out why. There’s only one place he’ll be safe: as an actor on the stage...

The first enstalment of an exciting NEW series from the author of The Wyrd Museum Trilogy and The Deptford Mice.Robin Jarvis’s latest creation is a world set in an alternate past – in a genre that can only be described as Scyence Fyctione! This strangely familiar Britain consists of ninety-three individual ‘blessed isles’ floating in the deep darkness and the story begins in December in the Gloriana Kalendar, when Elizabeth Tudor has reigned for one hundred and seventy-eight years....

This collection, ‘The Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen – with Honor Appleton illustrations’ is decorated with the magnificent colour and black-and-white artwork of Honor C. Appleton. It contains some of Andersen’s best stories, including such well-known and loved tales as ‘The Little Mermaid, ‘The Steadfast Tin Soldier’, ‘The Ugly Duckling’, ‘The Snow Queen’, ‘The Little Match Girl’ and ‘The Red Shoes’. Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875) was a Danish poet and author celebrated for h...

_______________'Historical fiction at its very best' - Waterstones' Guide to Kids' Books'Prolific, erudite and consistently brilliant ... breathtaking' - Guardian'Powerful, absorbing and unusual' - The Bookseller_______________An updated edition of this outstanding historical novel, in a stunning new package to celebrate the 20th anniv...

Over two million Shakespeare Shorts sold! Discover the world of Shakespeare with this collection of brilliant stories - perfect for readers of all ages.Beatrice and Benedick are perfect for each other - but they're too busy arguing to see it. Meanwhile, Claudio and Hero are happily head-over-heels in love... Will these two very different couples find their happy ending? Not if the villain Don John has anything to do with it!A wonderful retelling of this cla...

Ten-year-old Kenny (Kenji in Japanese) worships his older brother, Mickey (Mitsuo), a baseball hero whose outstanding performance on the Asahi baseball team has given him fame and popularity. Despite Kenny's suspected heart condition, he is determined to practice secretly with Mickey so he, too, can one day try out for the Asahi. But world events soon overtake life in this quiet community. When Japan attacks Pearl Harbor in 1941, everything for Kenny and his family spirals out of control: ...

Just over a century ago, Our Island Story entranced a nation's children by telling their history in stories. Short, simply written chapters, packed with living characters and thrilling action - and illustrated with vivid colour pictures - illuminate all the main events from Britain's earliest days to the end of Victoria's reign. And its glorious fusion of myth and legend with sober fact - Canute and King Arthur with Cromwell and the Indian Mutiny - is as seductive now as it ever was.

Two Jewish sisters leave Austria during WWII/Holocaust and find refuge in Sweden.It's the summer of 1939. Two Jewish sisters from Vienna—12-year-old Stephie Steiner and 8-year-old Nellie—are sent to Sweden to escape the Nazis. They expect to stay there six months, until their parents can flee to Amsterdam; then all four will go to America. But as the world war intensifies, the girls remain, each with her own host family, on a rugged island off the western coast of Sweden.

Born to Fly tells the story of eleven-year-old tomboy Bird McGill. Ever since she can remember, Bird has loved flying in small propeller airplanes with her mechanic dad. When the local airstrip is turned into a military flight school, Bird is in heaven. But when a young Japanese American student named Kenji Fujita joins Bird’s class, the entire school seems to be convinced that he’s a spy, or at the very least, that he and his uncle want the Japanese to win. Bird is wary of Kenji,...