Helen Dorward

It was a warning. Laura felt it when she looked in the mirror that morning. There had been others: the day her father left home, the day she met Sorensen - the boy with the strange silver eyes.

But nothing had prepared Laura for the horror of today. And now her little brother, Jacko, was fighting for his life after being sucked dry of his youth by the sinister Carmody Braque.

Laura knows there is only one way to save Jacko; she must join Sorensen and use his supernatural powers to change over if there is to be any hope for her little brother.

When her father loses his job, Ramona decides to help out. Maybe she could earn a million dollars making a TV commercial, or get her father to stop smoking to save money (and his lungs). She is full of ideas. Some work, some don't. But when her father says he wouldn't trade her for a million dollars, Ramona knows all is right in her world.

Ramona feels this is the awkward age - too little to stay by herself after school when her mother is at work, but too big to enjoy playing with pesty Willa Jean at her sitter's house. These days, all Ramona really wants is to twitch her nose and be her mother's little rabbit like she used to be. Can't she be her mother's little girl forever?

Mattie Ross is only fourteen when a coward called Tom Chaney guns her Papa down in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Being the eldest of the family and a girl of true grit she sets off to avenge her father's blood, outsmarting the hard-bitten men of the Wild West with her quick wit, her sharp tongue and her unflinching courage.

Set in a Scottish seaside town Nick is uneasy about the mysterious visitor who takes a room in his mother's house.