KS3 Top Reads!
Sally Nichols- Yours from the Tower
1896. Tirzah, Sophia and Polly are best friends who’ve left boarding school and gone back to very different lives. Polly is teaching in an orphanage. Sophia is looking for a rich husband at the London Season. And Tirzah is stuck acting as an unpaid companion to her grandmother. In a series of letters, they share their hopes, their frustrations, their dramas… and their romances. Can these three very different young women find happiness?
Vashti Hardy- The Weather Well
It’s the height of summer in Moreland, and Grace Griffin and her fellow warden Tom Eely are sweltering in the heat until they answer a strange call for help that comes through on the amazing Griffin map. After teleporting to Oakwell, they find the town paralysed by a freezing snowstorm, which is ruining the famous summer market that brings in visitors and trade. Using their mystery-solving skills and amazing inventions, can Grace and Tom find the cause for the weird weather and restore summer from the snow?
Sally Nicholls- Godfather Death
A soul-stirring reimagined Grimm tale by award-winning author Sally Nicholls and hauntingly illustrated by Julia Sarda which will spellbind and thrill readers of all ages. When a poor fisherman chooses Death to be godfather to his son, he’s sure he’s made a good choice – for surely there’s no man more honest than Death? At the christening, Death gives the fisherman a gift that seems at first to be the key to the family’s fortune, but when greed overcomes the fisherman, he learns that nobody can truly cheat Death . .
KS4 Top Reads!
Cynthia Murphy- Welcome to Camp Killer
When an American-style residential camp is set up in the grounds of an English stately home, the teenage camp counsellors are looking forward to a fun summer of activities. But right from the outset, things don’t feel quite right at Camp Miller. Rumours circulate of a tragedy that took place in the grounds and there are unexplained sightings of a ghostly presence. Then the incidents begin – a near-drowning out on the lake, a fatal fall from a cliff-face …
Are these tragic accidents or is there something more sinister going on at Camp Killer?
Tomi Oyemakinde- The Changing ManÂ
When Ife joins Nithercott School through its prestigious Urban Achievers Program, she knows immediately that she doesn’t fit. When she finds herself thrown into detention for the foreseeable future, she strikes up an unlikely alliance with Ben. They’ve both got reasons to want to get out of Nithercott – Ben’s brother is missing, and no one seems to be bothering to find him.
For Ife, it’s just another strange element of this school that doesn’t care about its students. But as more and more people start going missing, including one of Ife’s only friends, she starts to feel haunted. Who is the figure she’s started seeing in the shadowy halls?
Helen Corcoran- Daughter of Winter and Twilight
Emri – the adopted heir and daughter of two queens – is a living reminder that her birth father tried to usurp the Edaran throne. But as she grapples with a diplomatic visit from her estranged cousin, Melisande, the two girls are attacked by a magical force and spirited away.
They must put their differences aside when Emri comes face to face with a goddess she’s always considered a myth: Lady Winter. Trapped deep within a mountain temple alongside other young royals, they face a race against time to complete Lady Winter’s trials … or die.
