Joanna John

Meet Margaret. She's going through all the same things most teenage girls have to face; fitting in, friendship and first bras. Life isn't easy for Margaret. She's moved away from her childhood home, she's starting a new school, finding new friends - and she's convinced she's not normal. For a start she hasn't got a clue whether she wants to be Jewish like her father or Christian like her mother. Everyone else seems really sure of who they are. And, worst of all, she's a 'late developer'. She just knows that all her friends are going to need a bra before she does. It's too embarrassing to talk to her parents about these things. So she talks to God instead - and waits for an answer.

When Janie’s neighbour Mrs Tolen goes into hospital with a broken hip, it looks as though she will have to move out of her old caravan and into a house. Janie is desperate to help, but all seems lost until her school visits a local recycling plant. All it takes from there is imagination, a supportive community, and lots and lots of hard work to transform Mrs Tolen’s old caravan into a safe and secure new home!

In this international bestseller from the critically acclaimed Little People, BIG DREAMS series, discover the inspiring story of this international style icon. Following the death of her mother, Coco spent her early life in an orphanage, where she was taught how to use a needle and thread. From there, she became a cabaret singer, seamstress, hat maker, and, eventually, the world's most famous fashion designer.

The poverty, drunken fights between visiting sailors, drug trafficking, and criminal gangs haunting the shadows of the busiest docks in the world mean that the Coroner sees more than its fair share of sudden and unnatural deaths. But Coroner’s Officer May Keaps has never failed to provide a jury with sufficient evidence to arrive at a just verdict.

May relishes the responsibility placed upon her - but there are many who believe it’s an unsuitable job for a woman. Even May begins to wonder if that’s the case when the discovery of a young man's body, in a Limehouse alley, plunges her into an underworld of opium dens, gambling, turf wars, protection rackets and murder - and she fears ending up on one of her own mortuary slabs…

Fifteen-year-old Jade Flynn and three other girls were the sole occupants of the fourth floor of St Nicholas Care Home for Children. They were forced to take part in 'special community projects' - drug dealing, money laundering, gun running. Required to work for a man they called The Geezer. Until a shocking event made them rebel. Steal something that wasn't theirs.

So they ran. Disappeared.

10 YEARS LATER . . .

Jade Flynn is now living a respectable life as Jackie Jarvis and is getting married. She invites her three best friends to be her maids of honour. But someone else turns up as well - The Geezer. He'll kill them, unless they do one last job for him, then they can return to their normal lives. But can they trust him?

This time if they disappear they won't be coming back . . .

Freya North reunites her popular McCabe girls - sisters Cat, Fen and Pip - in her warm and sexy new novel. Despite their mother having run off with a cowboy from Denver when they were small, and having been brought up in a draughty house in Derbyshire by their eccentric uncle, Django, the McCabe girls actually consider themselves very normal and well-adjusted. Pip is stepmother to 10-year-old Tom, Fen has a young baby and Cat has returned to England to start a family. Their mid 30s are promising to be a time of comfort and contentment. However, at their uncle's 70th birthday party, an unexpected guest arrives. Old family secrets are unearthed. Soon, new bombshells are dropped. Each sister must confront her own identity crisis and handle the threat this places on relationships. Freya North has written a truthful, funny, sexy tale of mothers, daughters, lovers and liars.

Half vampire, half fairy, totally unique! Isadora Moon is special because she is different. Her mum is a fairy and her dad is a vampire and Isadora is a bit of both. Isadora loves going to human birthday parties, and now is going to have one of her own! But with her mum and dad organizing things, it's not going to be like the parties she's been to before . . .

Shortlisted for CrimeFest Awards' Best Crime Novel for Children 2019

When Viv has a fight with Noah, she doesn't think it'll be the last time she sees him. But when she gets back from school, he's nowhere to be found and there are police cars everywhere, lights flashing and sirens blaring.

Viv is sure Noah's run away to get attention. But it's really cold, and getting dark, and the rain just won't stop falling. So she sets off to look for him, furious at his selfishness, as the floodwaters rise. And then she finds him, and realises that a much more dangerous story is unfolding around them...

These are tales of psyches pushed to their limits by the expectations of everyday life - from a woman who gets lost on her drive back to her plush suburban home and ends up breaking into a stranger's house, to a first-person account of a cloned 1940s magazine pinup girl being sold at auction and embodying America's ideals of beauty and womanhood.

Taken as a whole, the collection forms a poignant tapestry of regular people searching for their place in a social hierarchy, often with devastating and disastrous results. The stories comprising Night, Neon showcase Oates' mastery of the suspense story and her relentless use of the form to conduct unapologetically honest explorations of American identity. 

When Bernard's bottom starts to make funny noises, he decides it MUST be broken! So along with his friends, he sets off in search of just the right replacement. No-Bot tries on all kinds of strange new bottoms, from a wheel of cheese to a large red sofa! Will Bernard EVER find the perfect bottom?

The penguin pack play all day long. And when the sun goes down, and the night grows cold and dark..."PENGUIN HUDDLE!" The penguins squeeze and squish together to stay warm and cosy. But one night, there is a freezing gale. And the next morning ... the penguins are stuck! They are frozen together like a giant penguin ice pop.

What a penguin MUDDLE! Nobody in the Antarctic can figure out how to unstick them. But Pipsqueak, the smallest penguin of them all, has a brilliant idea...

They must adventure out of their snowy home to a vibrant city across the great, gleaming ocean to solve their penguin puzzle. This light-hearted tale of jolly penguins big and small is a celebration of friendship, community spirit and helping those in trouble.

If Saul and Agnes don't do something their den will be destroyed. But the title deeds that could save it were lost in 1914. Good job they know the secret of time travel! 100 years before their own time, Saul and Agnes meet a brother and sister, servants at a big house where a sinister visitor is expected. Together the new friends try to uncover the mystery but Saul and Agnes know time is running out. Soon a war will begin: can they risk altering the past, the present and their future?

For five years, Maggie has known what her life is all about: her satisfying job in a small catering company, her boyfriend (and boss) Christian, and the future they're building together. Christian is the man Maggie's destined to be with forever, she fell in love with him the moment they met, their love runs River Deep, Mountain High - until Christian comes home one night and says the terrible words 'it's over'.

Numb, shocked and disbelieving, Maggie moves home to her parents' pub. Jobless and single, living in a bedroom still papered with A-ha and Take That posters, she's back to square one. The life she spent five years building is over. Or is it? Convinced she knows Christian better than he knows himself, Maggie sets out to win him back. But when she enlists the help of Pete, temporarily abandoned by his fiancé, she starts to wonder just how broken her heart really is...

Enter the haunted world of Ancient Japan in this spine-tingling collection of ghostly tales told and retold across the centuries. From Goblin infested caves and haunted Tombs, to vengeful spirits and strange, sinister happenings, Ancient Japan was a country and culture that lived with between realms: the world of everyday and the world of supernatural. The Snow Ghost and Other Tales brings together some of the best and scariest tales that endured across centuries of folklore, transporting readers to a time of magic and mystery.

For seventeen-year-old Magi Davis everyone in her life knows her secret, except for her... after Magi is almost murdered, her Egyptologist father takes her from their quiet rainy town in Seattle to Egypt in an attempt to seek refuge. After meeting R.J. Hicks, her father's witty business partner, and Carter McClain, the only person her age within miles, she quickly realizes that everyone in her life, including the neighborhood cat, has been lying to protect her from the mythological forces that were once her father's bedtime stories. Now, Magi must discover what her big secret is before an ancient deity kills her and everyone she cares about...

Based on the true story of Chinese dancer Lihua Tai, The Visible Sounds tells the uplifting tale of a young child dealing with the frustration and solitude of hearing loss. Alone in silence, the child's life is changed forever when a chance touch unlocks a vibrant new world, now blazing with rainbows of visible sounds. The Visible Sounds brings a message of hope and joy to children living with a disability and is an inspirational reminder that dreams can become reality.