Posts

Showing posts from April, 2020

KS3 LRC Book Recommendation - The Vanishing Trick by Jenni Spangler

Image
Step into a world of secrets, folklore and illusions, where nothing is as it seems and magic is at play... Leander is an orphan, making his way in the world on just his wits. So when he meets Madame Pinchbeck, a mysterious woman who promises to give him a job and a home in return for his mother’s precious locket, he leaps at the chance. But Pinchbeck’s bargain isn’t a fair one. Instead she enchants the locket, turning it into a magical Cabinet and trapping Leander inside to be summoned and vanished at will. And Leander isn’t the only child Pinchbeck has captured. Along with his new friends, Charlotte and Felix, Leander finds himself in a race against time to break Pinchbeck’s spell, before one of them vanishes forever... A spellbinding debut from exciting new talent Jenni Spangler. Set to bewitch fans of Michelle Harrison, Emma Carroll and Sophie Anderson. Publisher:  Simon & Schuster Ltd   ISBN:  9781471190377   Number of pages:  304  

KS4 LRC Book Recommendation - The Gilded Ones by Namina Forna

Image
Sixteen-year-old Deka lives in Otera, a deeply patriarchal ancient kingdom, where a woman's worth is tied to her purity, and she must bleed to prove it.  But when Deka bleeds gold - the colour of impurity, of a demon - she faces a consequence worse than death.  She is saved by a mysterious woman who tells Deka of her true nature: she is an Alaki, a near-immortal with exceptional gifts. The stranger offers her a choice: fight for the Emperor, with others just like her, or be destroyed... Publisher:  Usborne Publishing Ltd ISBN:  9781474959575  

KS5/Adult LRC Book Recommendation - Actress by Anne Enright

Image
Longlisted for the   Women's Prize for Fiction   2020 From Anne Enright, the Booker-winning Irish author, a brilliant and moving novel about fame, sexual power, and a daughter's search to understand her mother's hidden truths. This is the story of Irish theatre legend Katherine O'Dell, as told by her daughter Norah. It tells of early stardom in Hollywood, of highs and lows on the stages of Dublin and London's West End. Katherine's life is a grand performance, with young Norah watching from the wings. But this romance between mother and daughter cannot survive Katherine's past, or the world's damage. As Norah uncovers her mother's secrets, she acquires a few of her own. Then, fame turns to infamy when Katherine decides to commit a bizarre crime. Actress  is about a daughter's search for the truth: the dark secret in the bright star, and what drove Katherine finally mad. Brilliantly capturing the glamour of post-war America and t

KS5/Adult LRC Book Recommendation -

Image

KS5/Adult LRC Book Recommendation - Heads you Win by Jeffrey Archer

Image
Leningrad, Russia, 1968. Alexander Karpenko is no ordinary child, and from an early age, it is clear he is destined to lead his countrymen. But when his father is assassinated by the KGB for defying the state, he and his mother will have to escape from Russia if they hope to survive. At the docks, they are confronted with an irreversible choice: should they board a container ship bound for America, or Great Britain? Alexander leaves that choice to the toss of a coin... In a single moment, a double twist decides Alexander's future. During an epic tale of fate and fortune, spanning two continents and thirty years, we follow his triumphs and defeats as he struggles as an immigrant to conquer his new world. As this unique story unfolds, Alexander comes to realize where his destiny lies, and accepts that he must face the past he left behind in Russia. With a final twist that will shock even his most ardent fans, this is international number one bestseller  Jeffrey Archer 

KS4 LRC Book Recommendation - Thornhill by Pam Smy

Image
A true chills-down-the-spine ghost story that is equal parts Edgar Allan Poe, Charlotte Bronte, Alfred Hitchcock and Joan Aiken,  Thornhill  is a completely absorbing mystery that taps into childhood loneliness and the search for identity, with a healthy dose of heart-stopping dread thrown in for good measure. I knew it was too good to last. She is back. Without even looking, I knew it. I heard her laughter echoing up the stairwell... As she unpacks in her new bedroom, Ella is irresistibly drawn to the big old house that she can see out of her window. Surrounded by overgrown gardens, barbed wire fences and 'keep out' signs, it looks derelict. But that night, a light goes on in one of the windows. And the next day she sees a girl in the grounds. Ella is hooked. The house has a story to tell. She is sure of it. Enter Thornhill, Institute for Children, and discover the dark secrets that lie within. But once inside, will you ever leave? Told partly through historic j

KS3 LRC Book Recommendation - The Hunger Games - by Suzanne Collins

Image
The first book in the ground-breaking Hunger Games trilogy. Set in a dark vision of the near future, a terrifying reality TV show is taking place. Twelve boys and twelve girls are forced to appear in a live event called The Hunger Games. There is only one rule: kill or be killed. When sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen steps forward to take her younger sister's place in the games, she sees it as a death sentence. But Katniss has been close to death before. For her, survival is second nature. Publisher:  Scholastic   ISBN:  9781407132082   Number of pages:  448  

KS3 LRC Book Recommendation - Where The World Turns Wild by Nicola Penfold

Image
Animals, trees, flowers, our city forbids them all... Juniper Greene lives in a walled city from which nature has been banished, following the outbreak of a deadly man-made disease many years earlier. While most people seem content to live in such a cage, she and her little brother Bear have always known about their resistance to the disease, and dream of escaping into the wild. To the one place humans have survived outside of cities. To where their mother is.  When scientists discover that the siblings provide the key to fighting the disease, the pair must flee for their lives.  As they journey into the unknown, they soon learn that there's cruelty in nature as well as beauty. Will they ever find the home they're searching for? 

KS4 LRC Book Recommendation - A Winter's Promise - The Mirror Vistor by Christelle Dabos (author), Hildegarde Serle (translator)

Image
Long ago, following a cataclysm called the Rupture, the world was shattered into many floating celestial islands, now known as arks. Over each, the spirit of an omnipotent and immortal ancestor abides. The inhabitants of these arks each possess a unique power. Ophelia must navigate this fantastic, disjointed, perilous world using her trademark tenacity and quiet strength. Plain-spoken, headstrong Ophelia cares little about appearances. Her ability to read the past of objects is unmatched in all of Anima and, what’s more, she possesses the ability to travel through mirrors, a skill passed down to her from previous generations. Her idyllic life is disrupted, however, when she is promised in marriage to Thorn, a taciturn and influential member of a distant clan. Ophelia must leave all she knows behind and follow her fiancé to Citaceleste, the capital of a cold, icy ark known as the Pole, where danger lurks around every corner and nobody can be trusted. There, in the presen

KS5/Adult LRC Book Recommendation - In the Absence of Miracles by Michael J. Malone

Image
John Docherty's mother has just been taken into a nursing home following a massive stroke and she's unlikely to be able to live independently again. With no other option than to sell the family home, John sets about packing up everything in the house. In sifting through the detritus of his family's past he's forced to revisit, and revise his childhood. For in a box, in the attic, he finds undeniable truth that he had a brother who disappeared when he himself was only a toddler. A brother no one ever mentioned. A brother he knew absolutely nothing about. A discovery that sets John on a journey from which he may never recover. For sometimes in that space where memory should reside there is nothing but silence, smoke and ash. And in the absence of truth, in the absence of a miracle, we turn to prayer. And to violence.

KS3 LRC Book Recommendation - The Super Miraculous Journey of Freddie Yates by Jenny Pearson

Image
Freddie Yates likes facts. Just not the one staring him in the face - that his secret plan is not, in fact, secret. Because Freddie's journey wasn't meant to involve Big Trev and the onion-eating competition or the loo-exploding pear-and-potato turnovers. And Freddie definitely didn't expect to end up, with his two best friends, on national television in a supergirl costume. But journeys never take you where you think they will. And for Freddie, that fact might just have to be enough... The super funny, heart-warming adventure of three boys, one summer holiday, and a few miracles along the way.

KS4 LRC Book Recommendation - A Little History of Poetry - Little Histories by John Carey

Image
What is poetry? If music is sound organised in a particular way, poetry is a way of organising language. It is language made special so that it will be remembered and valued. It does not always work-over the centuries countless thousands of poems have been forgotten. This little history is about some that have not. John Carey tells the stories behind the world's greatest poems, from the oldest surviving one written nearly four thousand years ago to those being written today. Carey looks at poets whose works shape our views of the world, such as Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Whitman, and Yeats. He also looks at more recent poets, like Derek Walcott, Marianne Moore, and Maya Angelou, who have started to question what makes a poem "great" in the first place. This little history shines a light on the richness and variation of the world's poems-and the elusive quality that makes them all the more enticing. Publisher:  Yale University Press   ISBN:  9780300232226   Nu

KS5/Adult LRC Book Recommendation - Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell

Image
One of our greatest living novelists resurrects the short life of Hamnet Shakespeare, in this lyrically written and emotionally devastating account of the Bard’s only son. Utterly immersive and convincing,  Hamnet  is a poignant period tale that not only shines a light on an oft-neglected area of Shakespearean history but speaks to wider themes of grief and loss with impeccable poise and unflinching honesty. A stunning new departure for Maggie O'Farrell's fiction,  Hamnet  is the heart-stopping story behind Shakespeare's most famous play. On a summer's day in 1596, a young girl in Stratford-upon-Avon takes to her bed with a fever. Her twin brother, Hamnet, searches everywhere for help. Why is nobody at home? Their mother, Agnes, is over a mile away, in the garden where she grows medicinal herbs. Their father is working in London. Neither parent knows that one of the children will not survive the week. Hamnet  is a novel inspired by the son of a famou