Rain May and her mum escape their old inner-city life for a dream house in the country. But there are more than a few suprises in store - like discovering a platypus or the fun of fridge poetry and phenomenally bright eleven-year-old, Captain Daniel, who lives next door. Together these unlikely friends adventure where no one has gone before.
It’s game, set, perfect match when a bedeviled Captain and a disgraced Lady engage in a battle of wits in this delightful Regency romance. Though capable of turning on the charm, Captain Harry Fanton is so plagued by the demons of war that he swore he’d never marry. But that was before he met Lady Juliana Milford. Headstrong and obstinate, she is also undeniably charming, alluring, and beautiful. Could she be the one to help Harry forget his dark past? When Juliana first encounters Harry, she finds him arrogant and rude. There’s no way she’ll fall for his dazzling smile! Her visit to Chadcombe House was always going to prompt questions over her scandalous family, so she’s touched when Harry defends her reputation. She’s discovering there’s more to Harry than she’d first thought . . .
Longlisted for William Hill Sports Book of the Year 2020 'This pioneering memoir . . . engagingly balances the highs of captaincy and grand slams with striking emotional honesty as to her regrets' Guardian Books of the Year 'Her struggle is that of women’s rugby and it is told here with great honesty' Sunday Times Books of the Year Catherine Spencer was the captain of the England women’s rugby team for three years. She scored eighteen tries for England, won six of the eight Six Nations competitions she took part in, and captained her team to three championship titles, a European cup, two Nations Cup tournament victories and the World Cup final held on home soil in 2010, which thrust women’s rugby into the limelight. All of this while holding down a full time job, because the women’s team, unlike the men’s, did not get paid for their sport. Mud, Maul, Mascara is an effort to reconcile alleged opposites, to show the woman behind the international sporting success. Painfully honest about the mental struggles Catherine faced during, and after, her career as an elite athlete, it is also warm, funny and inspirational – a book for anyone who has ever had a dream, or self-doubt, or a yearning for a really good, mud-proof mascara.
A high-stakes fantasy rom-com about twin princesses separated at birth—one raised as the crown princess, and the other taken as an infant and raised to kidnap her sister, steal the crown, and avenge the parents' murders—the first novel in a new YA duology from bestselling UK authors Catherine Doyle and Katherine Webber. Perfect for fans of The Selection, My Lady Jane, and Caraval. Wren Greenrock has always known that one day she’d steal her sister’s place on the throne. Trained from birth to return to the palace and avenge her parents’ murder, she’ll do anything to become queen and protect the community of witches who raised her. Or she would, if only a certain guard wasn’t quite so distractingly attractive, and if her reckless magic would stop causing trouble. . . . Princess Rose Valhart knows that with power comes responsibility—and she won’t let a small matter like waking up in the desert with an extremely impertinent (and very handsome) kidnapper get in the way of her duty. But life outside the palace is wilder and more beautiful than she ever imagined, and the witches she has long feared might turn out to be the family she never had. But as coronation day looms and each sister strives to claim her birthright, an old enemy becomes increasingly determined that neither will succeed. Who will ultimately rise to power and wear the crown?
"I always knew my father was a pirate and I always knew I wanted to be one, too." At age fifteen, Catherine's life is about to change. Her mother has just died and Catherine can't stand the thought of being sent to live with her aunt in Boston. She longs for a life of adventure. After she discovers her father's secret life as captain of the pirate ship Reprisal, her only thoughts are to join him on the high seas. Catherine imagines a life of sailing the blue waters of the Caribbean, the wind whipping at her back. She's heard tales of bloodshed and brutality but her father's ship would never be like that. Catherine convinces her father to let her join him, disguised as a boy. But once the Reprisal sets sail, she finds life aboard a pirate ship is not for the faint of heart. If her secret is uncovered, punishment will be swift and brutal.
From bestselling author Catherine Cookson comes a compelling riches-to-rags story featuring secrets, scandal, and emotional drama set in Victorian England. Annabella Lagrange had the kind of childhood that most can only dream about. The only child of an aristocratic couple, raised on their magnificent estate in the English countryside, she was loved by her parents and coddled by servants who acquiesced to her every whim. She was allowed to do anything she wanted, except, of course, to stray too far from her wing of the house. But her seclusion didn't concern her too much, because when she grew up, she planned to marry her handsome cousin Stephen and live happily ever after. However, on the morning of her tenth birthday, Annabella ventured farther than she'd ever gone before. Overcome with curiosity, she opened a forbidden door that led into her father's private quarters, and what she found there showed her with shocking clarity that her father was not the man she thought he was. And though she couldn't know it at the time, the events of that day set in motion the uncovering of a secret that had been kept for many years. So begins the remarkable story of Annabella Lagrange, a sensitive, beautiful young woman who was raised as a lady. But when she turns eighteen, she learns the surprising circumstances of her birth, and her entire world quietly crashes around her. Suddenly she's forced from the genteel surroundings of her youth into the rough, lower-class society of Victorian England, where only her quick wit and determination can save her from starvation. Catherine Cookson was one of the world's most beloved writers, and in The Glass Virgin her powers are at their height. Rarely has a heroine been portrayed more sensitively or a situation more compellingly. Filled with passion and drama, The Glass Virgin is a rare treat for lovers of romantic fiction.
A brilliantly-conceived and hugely imaginative 'sequel' to Mary Shelley's masterpiece, Following Frankenstein is a hugely exciting and beautifully-written historical adventure, perfect for 9-12 year olds. Sometimes I was jealous of the monster of Frankenstein. I grew up believing my father cared more for him than he did for me. And was I wrong? Maggie Walton's father has dedicated his life to a single pursuit: hunting down the monster created by Victor Frankenstein. It has cost Maggie and her family everything - and now her father is staking everything on one last voyage to the Arctic, with Maggie secretly in tow, where he hopes to find the monster at last. But there they make a shocking discovery: Frankenstein's monster has a son... A breath-taking, epic adventure, spanning the icy wastes of the Arctic Tundra to the vaudeville circus of New York, from the award-winning author of No Ballet Shoes in Syria and Another Twist in the Tale.
