Michael Symmons Roberts’s fourth book of poetry, Corpus, was the winner of the 2004 Whitbread Poetry Award, and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize, the Forward Prize, and the Griffin International Prize. His sixth collection, Drysalter, was the winner of both the Forward Prize and the Costa Poetry Prize in 2013. He collaborated with Paul Farley on Edgelands (Cape/Vintage) and will do so again in The Deaths of the Poets (Cape, 2017). He has also worked many times with the composer James MacMillan. He has published two novels, and is Professor of Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Michael Symmons Roberts

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Gary Paulsen

America, 1955. For a 16-year-old boy out in the world alone for the first time, every day's an education in the hard work and boredom of migrant labor; every day teaches him something more about friendship, or hunger, or profanity, or lust--always lust. He learns how a poker game, or hitching a ride, can turn deadly. He discovers the secret sadness and generosity to be found on a lonely farm in the middle of nowhere. Then he joins up with a carnival and becomes a grunt, running a ride and shilling for the geek show. He's living the hard carny life and beginning to see the world through carny eyes. He's tough. Cynical. By the end of the summer he's pretty sure he knows it all. Until he meets Ruby.

The Beet Fields

Aidan Chambers

Everyone seems to know best when it comes to Jan's future - but he's still working out for himself who he really is. Jan feels so hemmed in by the pressures of family and friends, he decides to leave home and live alone in the house on the toll bridge. While there, he meets Tess and Adam and their close bond of friendship develops into something which has devastating effects on them all.

The Toll Bridge

Keith Gray

Brook High is a great grey concrete ants' nest of a school. John Malarkey is the new kid, thrown in at the deep end of Year 11. He's the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time. 
 
Through what at first appears to be a random meeting, he helps a girl called Mary Chase out of a tricky situation, but is subsequently accused of stealing report cards to sell to students so they can write their own bogus reports. He quickly realises it was all a set-up, and that he's been used to take the fall. The teacher who accuses him of the crime gives him one day to prove his innocence. Malarkey tries to track down Mary Chase, but it's difficult in such a huge place. He does, however, discover strange goings-on beneath the surface of the normal school day. The more questions he asks the deeper he becomes involved in the corrupt under-belly of the school. He's also noticed the peculiar fact that so many kids at Brook wear Adidas trainers - black with the three white stripes. He realises that these are the badge of membership worn by those involved in the school's 'mafia'. He discovers that the name of the organisation's leader is Freddie Cloth, and Mary Chase turns out to be Cloth's girlfriend. Malarkey is soon noticed for asking so many questions, and receives warnings and then threats to back down. But, with time quickly running out for him, he still has to prove his innocence. And the only way to do this is to get to Freddie Cloth.

Malarkey

Mark Haddon

Christopher is 15 and lives in Swindon with his father. He has Asperger's Syndrome, a form of autism. He is obsessed with maths, science and Sherlock Holmes but finds it hard to understand other people. When he discovers a dead dog on a neighbour's lawn he decides to solve the mystery and write a detective thriller about it. As in all good detective stories, however, the more he unearths, the deeper the mystery gets - for both Christopher and the rest of his family.

The Curious Incident of the Dog In the Night-time

Andrew Matthews

Suzanne is pretty ordinary, apart from Love Street. She has the equivalent of a TV inside her brain, the only thing is that the same programme is playing day in and day out and she's lost the remote control. Whenever she is stressed out, furious or just plain bored, the TV flashes to life and shows a sequence from the soap called Love Street - the problem is, things get weird when the soap itself begins to imitate the life of her friends, and herself.

Love Street

Annie Dalton

Maria Dalton

At the age of sixteen, shy introverted Naomi makes a harrowing adult decision about the future of her baby daughter. Sixteen years later, Carrie faces painful challenges of her own. These two very different girls from two different generations, are linked only by the invisible threads of DNA, but as their stories unfold, moving parallels as well as differences between their experiences emerge, lending unusual honesty and force to this compelling novel.

Invisible Threads

Louise Lawrence

A powerful post-nuclear holocaust novel described by the author as, 'my cry against the monstrous weapons men have made'. 
 
Everyone thought, when the alarm bell rang, that it was just another fire practice. But the first bombs had fallen on Hamburg and Leningrad, the headmaster said, and a full-scale nuclear attack was imminent . . . 
It's a real-life nightmare. Sarah and her family have to stay cooped up in the tightly-sealed kitchen for days on end, dreading the inevitable radioactive fall-out and the subsequent slow, torturous death, which seems almost preferable to surviving in a grey, dead world, choked by dust. 
But then, from out of the dust and the ruins and the desolation, comes new life, a new future, and a whole brave new world...

Children Of The Dust

Chris Ryan

Ben gets the chance for a trip of a lifetime when his mum is invited to attend a big conference in Australia. In the midst of a drought, it's hot. And it's dry. Drier than it's been for years. And it only takes a spark to set off a fire... As world leaders gather and a student demo gathers pace, a small flame takes hold - and suddenly an unquenchable fire bursts into life and an inferno of flames up to l00 metres high tear through the streets, threatening homes and lives. And in the smoke and confusion, an important general is kidnapped! Ben - just learning to fly - finds himself at the controls of a microlite and on the trail of the kidnappers...

Wildfire

Code Red

Christine Purkis

Theresa Bird thinks her life sucks: she misses her dad, hates her step-dad and her little sister drives her crazy. But with a can in her hands things don't seem quite so bad - or boring. For fifteen-year old theresa the odd drink is about the only thing that makes her world seem bearable. Trouble is, her mum's blown a gasket and now Theresa's in a whole heap of big, BIG trouble. . . .

Sea Change

John Rowe Townsend

A story first published as "Cloudy Bright". A young couple meet in Brighton when Sam wants to borrow Jenny's camera. They continue to meet because of Sam's use of the camera, but Jenny starts to wonder if there's more to their relationship. Could it be that Sam wants her, and not just her camera?

Sam And Jenny

Ben's on a trip to London to meet his mum. But an accident at the Thames Barrier, combined with a tidal surge and a dramatic thunderstorm - and suddenly his trip turns into something totally different as the Barrier is breached and London is flooded. With streets underwater, communications down, rats pouring up out of the sewers and thousands of people in a state of panic, survival becomes a key issue. But as Ben tries to get across London to meet his mother, little does he know that two terrorists have a similar rendezvous . . .

Flash Flood

Jonathan Stroud

Everyone says that Max is drowned, but Charlie thinks differently: she was in the mill-pool with him, and knows exactly what she saw. When she begins to see him in her dreams, her hopes are raised. It seems the reunion she craves is possible. But where exactly is Max leading her? And will she be able to return?

The Leap

John Farman

Everyone knows the story of Jesus' birth, and everyone knows how he died, right? But what about the bit in between - those formative teenage years? No-one knows if Jesus had crises with spots, girls or parents . . . until now. 
 
John Farman, author of the bestselling The Very Bloody History of Britain, takes a cheeky but affectionate look at those missing years in Jesus' life. You think you've had teenage-type problems to contend with? Wait till you read what Jesus had to go through!

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