The nowhere child – Christian White

Kimberly Leamy is a photography teacher in Melbourne, Australia. Twenty-six years earlier, Sammy Went, a two-year old girl vanished from her home in Manson, Kentucky. An American accountant who contacts Kim is convinced she was that child, kidnapped just after her birthday. She cannot believe the woman who raised her, a loving social worker who died of cancer four years ago, crossed international lines to steal a toddler.

On April 3rd, 1990, Jack and Molly Went’s daughter Sammy disappeared from the inside their Kentucky home. Already estranged since the girl’s birth, the couple drifted further apart as time passed. Jack did his best to raise and protect his other daughter and son while Molly found solace in her faith. The Church of the Light Within, a Pentecostal fundamentalist group who handle poisonous snakes as part of their worship, provided that faith. Without Sammy, the Wents eventually fell apart.

Now, with proof that she and Sammy are in fact the same person, Kim travels to America to reunite with a family she never knew she had. And to solve the mystery of her abduction—a mystery that will take her deep into the dark heart of religious fanaticism where she must fight for her life against those determined to save her soul…

Good Reads

Even if I fall – Abigail Johnson

A year ago, Brooke Covington lost everything when her beloved older brother, Jason, confessed to the murder of his best friend, Calvin. Brooke and her family became social pariahs, broken and unable to console one another. Brooke’s only solace remains the ice-skating rink, where she works but no longer lets herself dream about a future skating professionally.

When Brooke encounters Calvin’s younger brother, Heath, on the side of the road and offers him a ride, everything changes. She needs someone to talk to…and so does Heath. No one else understands what it’s like. Her brother, alive but gone; his brother, dead but everywhere. Soon, they’re meeting in secret, despite knowing that both families would be horrified if they found out. In the place of his anger and her guilt, something frighteningly tender begins to develop, drawing them ever closer together.

But when a new secret comes out about the murder, Brooke has to choose whose pain she’s willing to live with—her family’s or Heath’s. Because she can’t heal one without hurting the other.

Good Reads

Wildlife – Fiona Wood

Life? It’s simple: be true to yourself.
The tricky part is finding out exactly who you are…

In the holidays before the dreaded term at Crowthorne Grammar’s outdoor education camp two things out of the ordinary happened.
A picture of me was plastered all over a twenty-metre billboard.
And I kissed Ben Capaldi.

Boarding for a term in the wilderness, sixteen-year-old Sibylla expects the gruesome outdoor education program – but friendship complications, and love that goes wrong? They’re extra-curricula.

Enter Lou from Six Impossible Things – the reluctant new girl for this term in the great outdoors. Fragile behind an implacable mask, she is grieving a death that occurred almost a year ago. Despite herself, Lou becomes intrigued by the unfolding drama between her housemates Sibylla and Holly, and has to decide whether to end her self-imposed detachment and join the fray.

And as Sibylla confronts a tangle of betrayal, she needs to renegotiate everything she thought she knew about surviving in the wild.

Goodreads

Cloudfront

Now – Morris Gleitzman

Sometimes facing the past is the bravest act of all…

ONCE

I didn’t know about my grandfather Felix’s scary childhood.

THEN

I found out what the Nazis did to his best friend Zelda.

NOW

I understand why Felix does the things he does.

At least he’s got me. My name is Zelda too. This is our story.

Puffin

Whimsy and Woe

After being abandoned by their thespian parents one afternoon while playing their weekly family game of hide-and-seek, Whimsy and Woe Mordaunt are left in the care of their austere Aunt Atropine. Forced to work in her boarding house, looking after the guests, sharpening the thorns of every plant in the poisonous plant garden and listening to off-key renditions of Fish Are Friends Too – an aria made famous by the legendary Magnus Montgomery – Whimsy and Woe lose all hope that their parents will someday return. Until one day, quite by accident, the siblings stumble upon a half-charred letter that sets them on a course to freedom and finding their parents.

 

Good Reads

The Famous Five series – Enid Blyton

The Famous Five are a group of children who have the sort of adventures most kids dream about,

in a world where ginger beer flows and ham rolls are a staple diet. Julian, Dick and Anne get together with their cousin George in the first adventure, Five On A Treasure Island.

George is actually a girl who wants so desperately to be a boy she crops her hair and struts about doing boy things.

She hates it when people call her by her correct name, Georgina.

She has a dog called Timmy—oh yes, and an island.

Most kids just have a dog, but George’s parents own Kirrin Island and let her run around on it as if it were her play-thing.

Her parents are known to Julian, Dick and Anne as Uncle Quentin and Aunt Fanny.

enidblyton.net

wikimedia

Selp helf – Miranda Sings

Over six million social media fans can’t be wrong: Miranda Sings is one of the funniest faces on YouTube. As a bumbling, ironically talentless, self-absorbed personality, she offers up a vlog of helpful advice every week on her widely popular YouTube channel. For the first time ever, Miranda is putting her advice to paper in this easy-to-follow guide, illustrated by Miranda herself. In it, you’ll find instructions on everything: how to get a boyfriend (wear all black and carry a fishing net), to dressing for a date (sequins and an orange tutu), to performing magic (“Magic is Lying”), and much, much more! Miranda-isms abound in these self-declared lifesaving pages, and if you don’t like it…well, as Miranda would say…“Haters, back off!”

Good Reads

Amazon

The boy in the dress – David Walliams

The story concerns 12-year-old Dennis, who lives with big brother John and their lorry driver dad. Mum has gone, and Dennis misses her terribly.

He enjoys watching daytime TV, particularly Trisha – one episode concerns a woman who’s found out that she’s having an affair with her own husband – and he loves playing football.

Dennis is brilliant at football and his best friend Darvesh is pretty good too. Darvesh’s mum is his No 1 supporter and a wonderful, laugh-out-loud character. She drives them to matches, shouts from the sidelines and heaps disproportionate praise on her son, much – of course – to his embarrassment.

But Dennis is different.

Why is he different, you ask?

Well, a small clue might be in the title of this book…

The last song (movie)

Billionaire boy – David Walliams

Joe has a lot of reasons to be happy. About a billion of them, in fact.

You see,  Joe’s rich. Really, really rich. He’s got his own bowling alley, his own cinema, even his own butler who is also an orang-utan. He’s the wealthiest twelve-year-old in the land.

Yes,  Joe has absolutely everything he could possibly want. But there’s just one thing he really needs: a friend…

World of David Walliams