Joseph Delaney used to be an English teacher, before becoming the best-selling author of the Spook's series, which has been published in 30 countries and sold over 4.5 million copies worldwide. The first book, The Spook's Apprentice, was adapted into a major motion picture starring Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore.

Joseph Delaney

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Noel Streatfeild

A series of children's modern classic novels by renowned 20th century children's writers. All the titles in this series have the A Puffin Book logo, contemporary-style covers, and child-friendly endnotes.

Every family has its secrets, but it was a huge surprise to the three young Forbeses, fresh from a country vicarage, to discover that their grandmother was a famous actress. Sent to live with her in bombed-out, wartime London, they soon discovered that they were expected to follow in the family footsteps - to the footlights -! 
 
As an actress herself, Noel Streatfeild was familiar with all the details of the backstage world of the theatre. She has created an authentic, perceptive and vivid picture of theatrical life - from stage school to auditions to performances.

Theatre Shoes

Alexander McCall-Smith

'That,' said Mr Borthwick, 'was the best hamburger I've ever tasted!' 
 
Joe has just created the yummiest, juiciest, most delicious hamburger ever - and his friend Mr Borthwick wants to sell it in his hamburger shop to try and win back customers from the new fast-food restaurant across the road. But there's a problem - Joe has completely forgotten the recipe... 
 
A pinch of this, a touch of that and a spoonful of something else...the race is on for Joe to remember!

The Perfect Hamburger

Eve Garnett

The story of everyday life in the big, happy Ruggles family who live in the small town of Otwell. Father is a dustman and Mother a washerwoman. Then there's all the children - practical Lily Rose, clever Kate, mischievous twins James and John, followed by Jo, who loves films, little Peg and finally baby William. 
 
A truly classic book awarded the Carnegie Medal as the best children's book of 1937.

The Family from One End Street

B.B.

Three brothers run away from home to live like Robin Hood and his merry men, deep in the forest of Brendon Chase. They make their camp in an ancient oak tree and live like outlaws, loving the dangers and excitements of their wild surroundings. 
Their aim is never to be caught - but how can they avoid all the people who are searching for them, including the police?

Brendon Chase

Gerald Durrell

Ten-year-old Gerald doesn't know why his older brothers and sisters complain so much. With snakes in the bath and scorpions on the lunch table, the family home on the Greek island of Corfu is a bit like a zoo so they should feel right at home... 
Gerald joyfully pursues his interest in natural history in the midsts of an unconventional and chaotic family life - all brilliantly retold in this very funny book.

My Family and Other Animals

Jan Mark

When Andrew's family moves house, he strikes up an unexpected friendship with his neighbour Victor. There isn't a thing Victor doesn't know about the RAF planes flying overhead and the two boys are soon busy tracking their movements. 
Then Andrew discovers that Victor's beloved Lightnings are due to be scrapped... 
 
Thunder and Lightnings won the Carnegie Medal in 1976.

Thunder And Lightnings

Ursula Williams

When Aunt Lily marries the lodger and goes to America, orphaned Samantha is packed off to her Aunt Daisy, who lives in a grand house at the Park. Snooty Lady Daisy Clandorris has no time for children. Lucky for Samantha, then, to discover the small, furry creature living in the cellar; a bogwoppit - believed extinct - up till now...

Bogwoppit

Accidentally transported from his remote Scottish castle to the bright, fast-moving, hi-tech city of Toronto, the highly mischievous Boggart simply can't resist the opportunity for pranks, and wreaks havoc for the Volnik family, inheritors of his distant castle home. But the Boggart doesn't mean any real harm, and when he begins to pine for the rolling Scottish mists and the sound of bagpipes, he turns to his two young friends, Emily and Jessup Volnik, for help. 
 
A delightfully funny and moving story for children.

The Boggart

Philippa Pearce

Sid, Peggy and Amy adore the two gerbils, Bubble and Squeak, but their mother detests them. A major family battle results, and it's clear life is never going to be quite the same again. But after a near fatal encounter between Bubble and Ginger the cat, Mrs Sparrow begins to see that life with 2 gerbils might not be so bad after all.

The Battle of Bubble and Squeak

James Vance Marshall

Mary and her young brother Peter are the only survivors of an aircrash in the middle of the Australian outback. Facing death from exhaustion and starvation, they meet an aboriginal boy who helps them to survive, and guides them along their long journey. But a terrible misunderstanding results in a tragedy that neither Mary nor Peter will ever forget . . .

Walkabout

Catherine Johnson

Cato Hopkins is the youngest member of Mother Hopkins's 'family' - a group of skilled fraudsters and pickpockets. There's Addy, who can become a very convincing boy when she needs to; the beautiful Bella, who can charm any rich young man out of his fortune; Sam, an escaped slave and Cato himself, a young boy, who Mother Hopkins has taught everything she knows. 
 
 But old age is slowing Mother Hopkins down, and she wants to carry out one last con, a con to outdo all the cons that have gone before. And so the gang set about bringing ruin upon Captain Walker, a proud and cruel slave captain, who deserves to be taught a lesson or two .

A Nest of Vipers

Tove Jansson

Rediscover the A Puffin Book series and bring the best-loved classics to a new generation - including this magical edition of Finn Family Moomintroll complete with a charming new cover design. 
 
Cheerful Moomintroll lives in the magical Moominvalley with his mother, Moominmamma, his father, Moominpappa and all of their friends. One spring he wakes up to find a big hat - a magical Hobgoblin hat, no less, that mysteriously transforms anyone or anything that falls into it. . . 
 
They seem to grow in wisdom and delight every time I read them - Philip Pullman

Finn Family Moomintroll

Mary Clive

Based on real events and people, this story of a small girl's Christmas holiday in a large Edwardian country house is effortlessly funny. At Tamerlane Hall, Evelyn finds a horde of children: the gentle Glens, the plaintive Howliboos, and above all, the uninhibited Savages. They are controlled - or not - by a host of parents, supernumerary Uncles and Aunts, Nannies and nurserymaids. Evelyn survives the Christmas festivities - just - returning home none too soon! Seen through the eyes of a prim little eight-year-old, this is an amusing and touching account of a childhood a hundred years ago.

Christmas with the Savages

William H Armstrong

Set in the 19th-century American South, this is the story a poor African-American sharecropping family, their faithful dog, Sounder, and the eldest boy's efforts to learn how to read and help his mother to support the family after his father is arrested for stealing a ham. When Sounder chases after the Sheriff's deputies he is shot and he crawls away, seemingly to die. For weeks the boy thinks that he has lost both his father and his dog, but then Sounder comes back, lame and missing an ear. The boy continues to search for his father, until a few years later the father returns home, disabled from a quarry accident. Reunited at last, the father and Sounder go on one final hunting trip together . . .

Sounder

E. B. White

The enchanting tale of the mouse who is small in size but enormous in spirit. 
 
Stuart Little is no ordinary mouse. Born to a family of humans he lives in New York City with his parents, his older brother George and Snowball the cat. Though he's shy and thoughtful, he's an adventurous and heroic little mouse. His daring escapades include racing a toy boat in a Central Park pond, retrieving his mother's ring from a drain, and crawling inside a piano to fix the keys for his brother. When his best friend, a beautiful little bird called Margalo disappears from her nest, Stuart is determined to track her down. He ventures away from home for the very first time in his life and finds himself embroiled in one exciting adventure after another, making new friends and meeting old ones along the way.

Stuart Little

Anita Desai

A story of survival set in a small fishing villlage near Bombay. Lila and Hari, aged 13 and 12, struggle to keep the family, including two young sisters, going when their mother is ill and their father usually the worse for drink. When Hari goes to Bombay to find work, Lila seems to be responsible for everything. Although the book paints a picture of extreme poverty, it demonstrates the strength of the family even in the most extreme circumstances and offers a powerful picture of another culture.

The Village by the Sea

Michelle Magorian

It's 1945. World War II has just ended and twelve-year-old Rusty comes back home to Britain after being evacuated to the US. The greyness and bleakness of life in England is a shock, but even worse is adapting to the strict discipline of her family, including a brother she's never met, after the warmth and openness of her adopted American family. Rusty is sent to an horrific boarding school, before finally running away as her search for happiness becomes more and more desperate.

Back Home

Mary Norton

The Borrowers live in the secret places of quiet old houses - behind the mantelpiece, inside the harpsichord, under the kitchen clock. Everything they have is borrowed from the 'human beans', who don't even know they exist. But then young Arrietty makes friends with a boy - a 'human bean' - and from that moment danger is never far away for, above all else, they must avoid the great disaster of 'being seen'. 
In The Borrowers Afield the Pod family escape to the fields where their cousins live, but it's a long and dangerous journey. In The Borrowers Afloat Arrietty looks forward to a life away from the dark country cottage, to one full of sunshine. In The Borrowers Aloft: the family are now living in the model village of Little Fordham. All they have to do is avoid being seen by the visitors . . . In The Borrowers Avenged Pod, Homily and Arrietty have managed to escape with the help of Spiller. They move into the old rectory where they live happily until the Potters come looking for them. 
Poor Stainless: Young Stainless, a Borrower boy, goes missing on a mission to borrow some parsley and an enormous search ensues.

The Complete Borrowers

A Vicarage Family is the first part in a fictionalized autobiography in which Noel Streatfeild tells the story of her own childhood, painting a poignant and vivid picture of daily life in an impoverished, genteel family in the years leading up to the First World War. 
 
'What a pity the dear vicar has such trouble with Victoria...' 
Once there were three little girls - Isobel, the eldest, was pretty, gentle and artistic; Louise the youngest, was sweet and talented - and then there was Vicky, 'the plain one', the awkward and rebellious one who didn't fit in at school or at home. Growing up in a big family Vicky feels overlooked but gradually begins to realize that she might not be quite as untalented as she feels. 
 
The Vicky of this story is, of course, the much-loved Noel Streatfeild who went on to write so many wonderful family stories, the most famous being Ballet Shoes.

A Vicarage Family

Pod, Homily and Arrietty are a family of tiny people who live beneath the floor, behind the grandfather clock in the old rectory. They own nothing - everything they have is borrowed from the 'human beans' who don't even know they exist. Arrietty's father, Pod, is an expert borrower. He can scale curtains using a hatpin and bring back a doll's teacup without breaking it. Girl's aren't supposed to go borrowing, but as Arrietty is an only child, Pod breaks the rules. But when she is in the house borrowing, something happens which changes their lives. Arrietty makes friends with 'the boy upstairs'.

The Borrowers

Joan Aiken

Quentin Blake

Rediscover the A Puffin Book series and bring the best-loved classics to a new generation - including this treasured edition of Arabel and Mortimer Stories. 
 
Late one night, as Mr Jones drove his taxi home through a storm, he spotted a large black bird with a hairy fringe round its beak sprawled out in the road. 
 
Mr Jones decides to take the bird home to Number Six, Rainwater Crescent, London, NW 3 ½, to meet his daughter, Arabel, she'll know what to do - she loves animals! 
 
'His name's Mortimer', she said. 
 
But it doesn't take long until the mischievous Mortimer causes chaos in the Jones household. . .

Arabel and Mortimer Stories

Alison Uttley

Penelope lives in the 20th Century, and it is only when she visits Thackers, a remote, ancient farmhouse, that she finds herself travelling back in time to join the lives of the Babington family, and watching helplessly as tragic events bring danger to her friends and the downfall of their heroine Mary, Queen of Scots, whom they are seeking to rescue.

A Traveller in Time

Robert C. O'Brien

They are not like other rats. They work at night, in secret . . . 
 
Time is running out for Mrs Frisby. She must move her family of mice before the farmer destroys their home. But her youngest son, Timothy, is too ill to survive the move. 
 
Help comes in the unexpected form of a group of mysterious, super-intelligent rats. But the rats are in danger too, and little by little Mrs Frisby discovers their extraordinary past . . .

Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH

Rediscover the A Puffin Book series and bring the best-loved classics to a new generation - including this special edition of The Wolves of Willoughby Chase. 
 
It's 19th Century England, Good King James III is on the throne, and the whole country is ravaged by wolves which have migrated through the newly-opened Channel Tunnel. 
 
When young orphans Bonnie and Sylvia get caught by the governess, Miss Slighcarp - they need their wits and Simon the goose-boy - to escape unscathed. 
 
For Miss Slighcarp is more cruel and merciless than the wolves that surround the great house of Willoughby Chase. . .

The Wolves of Willoughby Chase

60th Anniversary Edition

Rediscover the A Puffin Book series and bring the best-loved classics to a new generation - including this thrilling edition of The Shadow Guests. 
 
Following the double disappearance of his mother and older brother, Cosmo Curtoy is sent to live with his strange cousin in England. 
 
When he arrives, Cosmo decides to explore the ancient Mill House on his cousins' estate - where he meets the Mill's spirited guests. . . 
 
But can he trust them? 
 
Join Cosmo on this supernatural time-travelling adventure and break the Curtoy's curse!

The Shadow Guests

Pauline, Petrova and Posy Fossil are sisters - with a difference. All three were adopted as babies by Great Uncle Matthew, an eccentric and rich explorer who then disappeared, leaving them in the care of his niece Sylvia. The girls grow up in comfort until their money begins to run out and nobody can find Great Uncle Matthew.Things look bleak until they hit on an inspired idea: Pauline, Petrova and Posy will take to the stage. But it's not long before the Fossils learn that being a star isn't as easy as they first thought...

Ballet Shoes

Rediscover the A Puffin Book series and bring the best-loved classics to a new generation - including this highly anticipated edition of More Arabel and Mortimer. 
 
Late one night, as Mr Jones drove his taxi home through a storm, he spotted a large black bird with a hairy fringe round its beak sprawled out in the road. 
 
Mr Jones decides to take the bird home to meet his daughter, Arabel, she'll know what to do - she loves animals! 
 
'His name's Mortimer', she said. 
 
Return to Number Six, Rainwater Crescent, London, NW 3 ½ with Arabel and Mortimer as this mischievous bird continues to cause chaos in the Jones household. . .

More Arabel and Mortimer

Katherine Paterson

Jess Aarons wants to be the fastest boy in the class, but when a girl named Leslie Burke moves into the neighbouring farm his life changes forever. Even though she runs faster than him, Jess begins to think Leslie might be okay - she's clever and funny and not a bit soppy. And it is Leslie who invents Terabithia, the secret country on an island across the creek where he can escape his troublesome family.The only way to reach Terabithia is by rope-swing where Jess and Leslie become King and Queen, defeating giants, sharing stories and dreams, and plotting against their enemies. They are invincible - until tragedy strikes. It is more dreadful than anything Jess had ever dreamed of, but as he struggles to cope with his grief and anger, he finds that his family value him more than he'd thought and that, still King, he could even save Terabithia for the future.

Bridge to Terabithia

Anne Frank

In July 1942, thirteen-year-old Anne Frank and her family, fleeing the horrors of Nazi occupation, went into hiding in an Amsterdam warehouse. Over the next two years Anne vividly describes not only the daily frustrations of living in such close quarters, but also her thoughts, feelings and longings as she grows up. Her diary ends abruptly and tragically when, in August 1944, Anne and her family were all finally betrayed.

The Diary of a Young Girl

The Definitive Edition

Gus the clown is Peter and Santa's only living relative, and escape to the circus seems a better idea to them than an orphanage. But Gus will keep the children only if they make themselves useful - and they have to fight hard to really belong to the circus.

Circus Shoes

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