Joy Dansette

Everybody likes to shout and sing, but it's definitely more fun when we all join in! A hilarious collection of read-aloud rhymes from the nation's favourite illustrator, Quentin Blake!

April and her mother have been housed in temporary accommodation. Promised a brighter future by her mother, April finds her life there to be filled with things that are old, broken and impersonal. She longs for her own things and for some beauty in her life but experiences only frustration and disappointment until one day she plants some seeds…

From the Rainbow Magic stories. Belle the Birthday Fairy's job is to make sure that all birthdays are filled with joy and laughter! But there is one mean creature who is incapable of enjoying even this special day... Jack Frost! He steals Belle's magical items, and hides them in cunning places, causing chaos for birthdays everywhere.

Will Rachel and Kirsty be able to help Belle find her items, or are birthdays ruined forever...?

Riah Millican came to regret that her husband had learned to read and write, and then shared his knowledge with her and their children. For this was Durham in the 1830’s, when employers regarded the spread of education with suspicion. But now Seth was dead and she needed to find a home and a living. Her new job as a housekeeper in Moor House with a scholarly recluse, started a chain reaction that should have opened many doors to her future but instead created many problems.

Whatever the changing seasons and evolving world presents to the crow, they use their adaptability, discerning memory and crafty problem-solving techniques to overcome every possible hurdle. Young readers will be bowled over by these unassuming creatures they come across every day, and will find a new-found respect for the birds that are smart, clever, crafty and playful, just like them. 

Katie is the apple of her mother’s eye and is being groomed to take over the family business. But when Celia, her natural mother, re-enters her life, her world is turned completely upside down. Tormented by her divided loyalties, Katie is plagued by a question Celia refuses to answer – who is her real father?

Have you ever felt small and low? Can Wawa the bird find a way to help her friend see that being different can be a strength, giving a child the courage to fly a kite at the town's festival? Join the pair on an extraordinary and inspiring journey through the wonders of the world, helping to grow understanding and confidence.

Laura has a successful career, a long marriage to a rich husband, and her son Daniel is kind, handsome, and talented. Then Daniel meets Cherry. Cherry is young, beautiful and smart but hasn’t led Laura’s golden life. And she wants it. When tragedy strikes, a decision is made and a lie is told. A lie so terrible it changes their lives forever...

Annabella LaGrange was the only child of a wealthy family, owners of a glassworks in the North-East of England. When she is seventeen, Annabella learns something so shocking about her past that she flees her childhood home and is forced to embark upon a new existence with an invented past. Suddenly she must unlearn everything she has been taught about class and love.

Preparations for the wedding of one of Lady Grace's fellow Maids of Honour are interrupted when a shipment of gold, on its way to the Queen, is stolen! The culprit is a single masked horseman, all in black - or is it a gang of ruffians from the forest? The clues seem to point in several different directions and Grace, as Queen Elizabeth's trusty secret Lady Pursuivant, can't make head or tail of them. Could one of the newcomers to court be involved? And will Grace be able to help recover the fortune?

When a princess is sent away to begin a new life, little does she know what lies in store... Discover how this heroine, cruelly tricked by her evil maid, struggles to prove her innocence to the handsome prince she is destined to marry.

This delightful book gives children the tools they need to deal with lots of different feelings - without it all ending in tears! It explores 12 common emotions, including happy, angry, excited, bored and embarrassed, and offers ideas for what children could do when they feel this way. This edition has also been fully updated with the latest guidance on developing children's emotional intelligence.

This is a great dip-in book where children can choose a feeling that relates to them and then turn to the page that provides child-friendly strategies for dealing with that feeling. Early Years and PSHE expert Molly Potter also provides notes at the back of the book for parents and carers explaining emotional literacy, and a Feelings Tracker for children to map out their emotions.

Alison Grant is just five when her father is sent to prison for murder. Her mother blackens his character and when she's taunted at school for being a jailbird's daughter she feels ashamed of him. Then Doreen Grant abandons Alison and the little girl goes to live with her grandmother, the housekeeper at Bellhanger House. And when she becomes friends with the owner's nephew, she tells him her mother is dead and her father is a ship's captain. It is the beginning of a new life of betrayal and deception, which continues when Alison leaves Bellhanger House after her grandmother's death. She begins to dream of owning a chain of cafes and becoming a lady. But her family's shaming secret will come back to haunt her once more.

Jonty the little gentoo penguin longs to find his true home at the South Pole.

One night, he sneaks out of the zoo and sets off on an amazing adventure, all the way to Antarctica (with an accidental detour to the North Pole!)

Children will be cheering Jonty on as he finally finds his way, in this captivating story of bravery, friendship, and finding your place in the world.

Even as a child Barbara was beautiful, but as her beauty grew, so did the affliction which shadowed it - she was becoming more and more deaf. Yet living in her silent world, she was protected from the knowledge which might otherwise have destroyed her - the secret of her own origins. Book 2 of series.

Each generation of the Mallen family has been cursed with a dramatic white streak in their jet-black hair. When Barbara's triplets - the Mallen litter - were born, she hoped that it would herald a new beginning. But it seems that one of her sons bears the Mallen streak - and that the Mallen curse will never die out... Book 3 of the trilogy.

Robert Bradley, a young man of independent mind and spirit, gave up his job in the Jarrow shipyards to work at his uncle's old-established carpenter's shop in a small village. Life with domineering Uncle John and his family did not always prove easy, however, and on Sunday Robert was glad to set off alone exploring the Durham countryside. At a friendly wayside inn he heard talk about Foreshaw Park, the sadly run-down estate of the once wealthy Thorman family, and walking home in the moonlight he had his first strange encounter with Millie, the ethereal girl-child of that house whose odd ways and nocturnal wanderings had led to her being known locally as 'Thorman's Moth'. The time came when a sudden and dramatic turn in Robert's affairs brought him a much closer involvement with the Thormans of Foreshaw, and especially with the elder daughter Agnes who shouldered so many of the burdens of this troubled household and who alone of all her family loved and protected the frail unworldly Millie. But this was 1913, and anything beyond the most formal relationship between servant and mistress had to face the barriers and injustices of a rigid social hierarchy that was soon to perish in the flames of war.

When Ellen Jebeau's husband dies in 1926, he leaves behind a legacy of debt and empty dreams. However, Ellen is determined that her son Joseph should have everything in life that she never did, and will stop at nothing to give it to him.

Ellen and Joseph soon find themselves in a convenient arrangement with Ellen's brother-in-law, Sir Arthur, living on the family estate, an arrangement which quickly comes to work in conniving Ellen's favour…

But over the course of the next twenty years, as destinies intertwine, can Joseph Jebeau escape the clutches of his mother's ruthless ambition, and emerge from the shadows of his heritage as the man he truly wants to be?

Harry Blenheim had always been known as the nice bloke, an inoffensive man whose existence was as dull as ditchwater. But when he gives into the demands of the vivacious Betty Ray, the scandal that follows not only splits his family but ruins his career.

Catherine Cookson describes her own early years and the hard life led by her mother, Kate, whom she originally believed was her older sister.

With a snoring Mrs Bear, an excitable Baby Bear and a house full of tapping and dripping and ticking, peace is hard to come by - will Mr Bear ever get a decent night's sleep?

Polly Pride's life is falling apart. Her husband has lost his job, there's no money coming in, and she has two young mouths to feed.

With the prospect of poverty looming over her, and her husband wallowing in apathy, Polly takes control. She sells everything they own and buys a rickety old handcart. Polly piles it high with second-hand rugs and spends hours hawking her wares around Manchester's cobbled streets.

But her determination to persevere will be tested to its limits, as she juggles her work, the pressures of her young family, and her husband's wounded pride. Will her life fall apart completely - especially when tragedy strikes - or can she keep it together?

CONTENT WARNING: contains scenes of rape

Connie Bell, newly orphaned, is taken on at the laundry in Sunderland's grim workhouse. Although she's little more than a child, the events of her past have forged a driving determination to rise above her beginnings. Connie gets work as assistant housekeeper at the Grand Hotel and starts saving hard for her own business. When her path crosses Dan Stewart's, though, everything Connie's ever dreamed of is threatened. There's a dark and terrible history between the Bells and the Stewarts, and Dan's mother will do anything to keep them apart.

Fizzing with rhythm, energy and laughter, the 30 poems in Ready for Spaghetti delight in the details of children's daily routines. "Up, up, uppity-up!", the first poem announces, describing a child leaping out of bed, ready to begin their morning; "Hush and a hush, soft and low", chants the final poem, as children snuggle under their blankets after their day's adventures. Full of affectionate observations of young children, Michael Rosen's poems are ideal for reading aloud with toddlers... and many grown-ups will soon know them by heart!

Tim Parkes was three when his parents were killed in a train crash and he went to live with his Aunt May. They managed splendidly - and then came the war. When Tim enlists and is posted to Suffolk, he isn't too pleased. Minnie Beavers was wildly in love with Tim and determined to marry him the minute she was old enough. Tim was equally determined to escape and find another girl. By the time Tim has gone away to fight and Minnie has joined the WAAF, a great many things had changed in both their lives...  Book 6 of series.

A kid's life as a Viking might sound like fun, what with all those cool battles and awesome longships, but actually life for kids could be pretty hard. In this hilarious book, children will learn just how tough life really was, from spending years on a raid and sharing your bedroom with farm animals, to being poked full of holes, and even eating extremely watery porridge.

Sammy Adams is always on the look-out for a new business opportunity. When he hears from his son David about the new-fangled supermarkets that are becoming all the rage in America, he immediately starts looking for a suitable site in South London. Meanwhile, legacies of the last war continue to haunt the Adams family. The mystery of Katje Galicia, the Polish woman who knows something of Sir Edwin Finch's past, becomes a major police enquiry while a beautiful German girl appears, bringing wartime memories back to Tim Adams and his wife Felicity. Meanwhile the younger members of the Adams family are starting to spread their wings.  Book 23 of series.

Growing up on a small, struggling farm on the outskirts of Sunderland in the early 1900s, Polly Farrow has a tough life, but she has gifts money can't buy - a joyful disposition and a loving heart. And her heart belongs to her beloved cousin, Michael. Polly knows that one day they'll be man and wife. But a terrible secret is to change everything: Michael is her half-brother, the fruit of an incestuous relationship between her father and his own sister - Michael's mother. The lovers are rent apart and Polly is left to bear the responsibility of the farm alone - for her father kills himself, unable to live with his shame. Life is now a battle for survival, and Polly wonders if she will ever find happiness. But the answer to her prayers is closer than she thinks...

From the Rainbow Magic stories. It's time to meet a whole new group of fairy friends, the enchanting Twilight Fairies. The Night Fairies' magic is missing - and now none of the forest creatures know when to be asleep, and when to be awake! Rachel and Kirsty have to do something! This collection includes the following titles: Ava the Sunset Fairy, Lexi the Firefly Fairy, Zara the Starlight Fairy, Sabrina the Sweet Dreams Fairy, Morgan the Midnight Fairy, Yasmin the Night Owl Fairy, Maisie the Moonbeam Fairy.

Coming up sixteen, Tilly Trotter is different from the other girls in her village. Tall for her age and coltish, she is not afraid of taking on "man's work" to help out the grandparents who raised her in a cottage at the edge of the Sop with Estate, only a few miles from the bustling Tyneside towns of County Durham. Testing times lay ahead for Tilly, often hard to endure and even bringing her the undeserved taint of being suspected of witchcraft. Tilly, with her unusual beauty, envied by the local women and lusted after by the men, only loves one man, farmer Simon Bentwood. She is heartbroken to discover he is betrothed to another. A spurned suitor takes a terrible revenge, and a betrayal forces her into the cruel drudgery of the local mine and puts her life in danger. But Tilly refuses to let her spirit be broken, determined that all this will only serve to make her stronger, and she grows to become a young woman of innate courage and fortitude. Set at the beginning of the Victorian era, this is a compelling story that follows the shaping of a young woman's life and destiny.  Book 1 of series.

We Are Explorers tells the stories of fourteen women whose adventurous spirit and curiosity saw them discover the world. Their exhilarating life stories are told by the equally adventurous author and illustrator Kari Herbert, whose father was the celebrated British polar explorer Sir Wally Herbert. Herbert's engaging style of story-telling brings both famous and little-known female explorers to life, revealing the challenges they faced, the significance of their achievements and their personal motivations.

What would you do if you found your husband in bed with your best friend? For journalist Cleo James the best revenge is moving on, and she has the perfect assignment to throw in Mike’s face: a high profile piece that involves an in-depth, probing analysis of five of the world’s most eligible male movie stars. And why can’t she have a little fun while she’s at it…