New books

How are plants and animals related? What is the universe made of? And just what is the big secret behind it all? Scientists have been exploring these mysteries and many others for thousands of years, and this book is packed with flaps that reveal the amazing things they have discovered.

Cleo and her unicorn friends are having fun dancing, prancing and swishing their tails in the magic forest, until - oh no! - their noise wakes the big, scary GIANT. But not all is what it seems - and a FE FI FO FUM turns quickly into friendship!

Bird is looking for her best friend Bee. She searches high in the sky and deep underground - she can't find Bee anywhere - but who else will she meet along the way?

The Women's Murder Club is out celebrating an engagement at San Francisco's finest restaurant when a blood-curdling scream interrupts the festivities. They soon discover a young woman who has been the victim of a violent assault. Sergeant Lindsay Boxer makes an arrest. Assistant District Attorney...

Eid Mubarak! Can Ali Tahir use his creative powers to save the holiday party? It's Eid, Ali's favourite day of the year! The family has fun plans for this special day after the Muslim holiday Ramadan. But Ali's brother, Fateh, is being cranky and keeps spoiling everything! Can Ali find a way to c...

Ali Tahir joins in a paper plane contest with a surprise twist. On a rainy day, Ali brings the fun to indoor break by sharing his talent for building paper planes with his friends. But in a contest to see whose plane can fly furthest, Ali is baffled by the results. Will aeroplane expert Ali flop ...

In 1850s South Carolina, Rose, an enslaved woman, faced a crisis: the imminent sale of her daughter Ashley. Thinking quickly, she packed a cotton bag with a few items. Soon after, the nine-year-old girl was separated from her mother and sold. Decades later, Ashley's granddaughter Ruth embroidered...

As the long-lost heir to the Jinn throne, Alizeh has finally found her people - and she might've found her crown. Cyrus, the mercurial ruler of Tulan, has offered her his kingdom in a twisted exchange: one that would begin with their marriage and end with his murder. Cyrus's dark reputation prece...

Would you rather go the theatre in ancient Greece or go to a festival? Would you rather hang out with Hades or Hermes? Only you can decide!

Argyll, 1998. Stories run deep in the MacArthur family, passed from generation to generation. Tales not just of selkies and changelings, but of the lives and deaths of the family themselves. Anna MacArthur has heard how her beautiful grandmother Netta boarded a ship for Canada after the war, leav...

Anna Ogilvy hasn't opened her eyes for four years. Not since that night at The Farm when she was found asleep with a kitchen knife in her hand, her clothes bloodstained, the bodies of her two best friends lying close. She'd committed the crime of the century - but nothing and no-one could wake he...

Let's face it - teenagers are under massive pressure. School, homework, exams, teachers, parents, relationships, looking good, hormones ... you name it. It's no wonder they sometimes slip into negative mode. But here's a scary stat. Your average life-span is 4000 weeks. And while that might be qu...

1945. In the waning months of World War II, Japan hid vast quantities of gold and other stolen valuables in boobytrapped underground caches all across the Philippines. By 1947 some of that loot was recovered, not by treasure hunters, but by the United States government, which told no one about th...

A Bigfoot is on the loose! Ted, Nancy, Willow and the rest of the Grimwood gang must embark on their greatest adventure yet to save their home from a nasty, thieving stink monster. Monster hunters are GO!

The newly discovereFlower shop owner Ellie McEwan is driving home late one frosty November night when a shadowy figure leaps into the road out of nowhere. Ellie swerves to avoid him and slams head-on into the crash barrier. Days later, Ellie wakes up in hospital and notices there’s something dif...

Goddess, Goddess, count to five. In the morning, who's alive? One town. One night. Four people gone. Nora's best friend, Becca, is one of the lost. As Nora tries to piece together the truth, she uncovers dark events in her high school's history and a string of coded messages Becca has left for he...

Spain, 1939. Julia enters a convent. She volunteers to help in a maternity clinic, but worrying practices in the clinic force her to decide how far she will go. England, 2011. 34-year-old Ruby Rae has finally found the strength to pack away her parents' possessions and sell the family home. But a...

This story is part of Reading Champion, a series carefully linked to book bands to encourage independent reading skills, developed with Dr Sue Bodman and Glen Franklin of UCL Institute of Education (IOE). Fantastic, original stories are accompanied by engaging artwork and a reading activity. Each...

'Reading Champion' is a book banded reading programme for children who are learning to read or improving their reading skills to become a real reading champion! It offers fantastic, original stories accompanied by engaging artwork and a reading game. Each book has been carefully levelled making i...

Eve should never have married Don Hathaway. Yes, he gave her two beautiful children - Olly and Tabitha - but he is a bully. Worse than that, he hurts her. But, after one drunken rage too many, she has the courage to leave him. Eve is warned that it's a difficult path, yet she needs to give her ch...