The Originals

MANNY WANTS TO BE A FOOTBALLER. OR A POP STAR. OR WRITE A BESTSELLER. HE DOESN'T WANT TO GET MARRIED...

'Harry and Ranjit were waiting for me - waiting to take me to Derby, to a wedding. My wedding. A wedding that I hadn't asked for, that I didn't want. To a girl who I didn't know... If they had bothered to open their eyes, they would have seen me: seventeen, angry, upset but determined - determined to do my own thing, to choose my own path in life...'

Set partly in the UK and partly in the Punjab region of India, this is a fresh, bitingly perceptive and totally up-to-the-minute look at one young man's fight to free himself from family expectations and to be himself, free to dance to his own tune.

An 'After-the-Bomb' story told by teenage Danny, one of the survivors - one of the unlucky ones. Set in Shipley, an ordinary town in the north of England, this is a powerful portrayal of a world that has broken down. Danny not only has to cope in a world of lawlessness and gang warfare, but he has to protect and look after his little brother, Ben, and a girl called Kim. Is there any hope left for a new world?

At thirteen years old, Adrian Mole has more than his fair share of problems - spots, ill-health, parents threatening to divorce, rejection of his poetry and much more - all recorded with brilliant humour in his diary.

After Shell's mother dies, her obsessively religious father descends into alcoholic mourning and Shell is left to care for her younger brother and sister. Her only release from the harshness of everyday life comes from her budding spiritual friendship with a naive young priest, and most importantly, her developing relationship with childhood friend, Declan, charming, eloquent and persuasive. But when Declan suddenly leaves Ireland to seek his fortune in America, Shell finds herself pregnant and the centre of a scandal that rocks the small community in which she lives, with repercussions across the whole country. The lives of those immediately around her will never be the same again.

Nobody wants Tulip in their gang. She skives off school, cheeks the teachers and makes herself unpopular with her classmates by telling awful lies. None of this matters to Natalie who finds Tulip exciting. At first she doesn't care that other people are upset and unnerved by Tulip's bizarre games, but as the games become increasingly sinister and dangerous, Natalie realises that Tulip is going too far, much too far, racing, in fact, to the novel's shocking ending.

Victor Frankenstein, a Swiss scientist, has a great ambition: to create intelligent life. But when his creature first stirs, he realizes he has made a monster. A monster which, abandoned by his master and shunned by everyone who sees it, sets out to destroy Dr Frankenstein with murder and horrors to the very ends of the earth.

Reissued in Originals (Penguin) with an introduction by Haifaa Al Mansour, director of the biopic movie Mary Shelley (2017).

Martha is twelve - and very different from other kids, because of her parents. Strict members of a religious group - the Brethren - their rules dominate Martha's life. And one rule is the most important of all: she must never ever invite anyone home. If she does, their shameful secret - Abomination - could be revealed. But as Martha makes her first real friend in Scott, a new boy at school, she begins to wonder. Is she doing the right thing by helping to keep Abomination a secret? And just how far will her parents go to prevent the truth from being known?

The third of Joan Lingard's ground-breaking Kevin and Sadie books.
Protestant Sadie and Catholic Kevin have married and "escaped" to London - but will they ever really be free of Belfast and its troubles? In this third book about Sadie and Kevin, Joan Lingard has added an understanding of the strains of young marriage to the sombre representation of life in Belfast.

Rusty, a sixteen-year-old Anglo-Indian boy, is orphaned, and has to live with his English guardian in the claustrophobic European part of Dehra Dun. Unhappy with the strict ways of his guardian, Rusty runs away from home to live with his Indian friends. Plunging from the first time into the dream-bright world of the bazaar, Hindu festivals and other aspects of Indian life, Rusty is enchanted - and is lost forever to the prim proprieties of the European community.

Written when the author was himself seventeen, this timeless story of love and friendship will resonate with a whole new generation of readers.

Nobody knows how long it has been since the Tripods came. Nobody remembers life on Earth before they enslaved it. Humans live in scattered farms and villages, kept quiet and obedient by the mind-controlling Caps implanted when they reach their teens.

Will Parker's time is fast approaching - but a chance encounter with a madman convinces him that it may still be possible to resist the alien masters. So begins a terrifying story of survival and defiance - and Will's journey to the White Mountains.

Kevin and Sadie just want to be together, but it's not that simple. Things are bad in Belfast. Soldiers walk the streets and the city is divided. No Catholic boy and Protestant girl can go out together - not without dangerous consequences . . .

The second of Joan Lingard's ground-breaking Kevin and Sadie books

On the outskirts of a small American town, a bus-load of young children is being held hostage. The hijackers are a cold and ruthless group, opposed to the secret government agency Inner Delta. At the centre of the battle are three teenagers. Miro is the terrorist with no past and no emotions. Kate is the bus driver, caught up in the nightmare, and Ben is the General's son who must act as a go-between. After the First Death is a tense hostage drama, which will appeal to all fans of thrillers, especially YA readers.

Buddy has a hopeless father who is an ageing rocker, interested only in Elvis and bikes, and living on the fringes of the under-world. When Buddy's mum walks out, the two manage to strike up some kind of relationship - until Buddy realises that his dad is involved in something more serious than he suspected. A moving, totally convincing account of a boy's faltering relationship with his father, in an evocative and well-drawn Eighties Britain.

The moving and very real story of two teenagers and an unplanned pregnancy. It is told from two viewpoints - that of Helen as she writes her thoughts in a series of letters to the unborn baby, the Dear Nobody of the title, and of her boyfriend Chris as he reads the letters. This Carnegie Medal-winning novel is now part of the Originals - Penguin's ground-breaking modern classics for young adults.

Esther Rudomin was ten years old when, in 1941, she and her family were arrested by the Russians for being 'capitalists' and transported to the endless steppe of Siberia. This is the very moving true story of the next five years spent in exile, of how the Rudomins kept their courage high, though they went barefoot and hungry.

"I write this sitting in the kitchen sink" is the memorable first line of this enchanting coming-of-age story, told in the form of Cassandra Mortmain's journal. Cassandra wittily describes life growing up in a crumbling castle, with her father who suffers from crippling writer's block, her glamorous but ineffectual step-mother and her vain but beloved sister Rose. When two visiting Americans arrive, all of their lives are turned upside down, and Cassandra experiences her first love.

This is a classic coming-of-age story, beloved of millions of teenage and adult readers, and sure to be enjoyed for generations more.