Swallow’s Dance by Wendy Orr

Allen & Unwin  ISBN 9781911631200    £7.99 This is a coming of age story. Leira is from a privileged background, the priest-class, and is on the brink of becoming a woman when her world is turned upside down. An earthquake and volcanic eruptions destroy her home, her life, her island. Her mother is seriously injured in…

A Girl Called Justice by Elly Griffiths

Quercus ISBN: 978178650782 £6.99 Justice Jones has sleuthing written into her DNA.  Her mother is the author of the Leslie Light crime novels and her father is a QC specialising in murder cases.  After the death of her mother, Justice is packed off rather swiftly to boarding school, where even before she arrives at the gates, the…

Pog  by Pádraig Kenny

Chicken House books ISBN 9781911490395 £6.99 Penny, her brother David and their dad, move into a new house in the middle of a forest; their mother’s childhood home. Mum is apparently en route. Later we find out that mum has died in a road accident and when she does arrive it will be in an…