Extended Reviews

The Stain of Blood Shed Long Ago – Mythology and Modern Literature

The Arrow of Apollo by Philip Womack “Right’s anvil stands staunch on the ground and the smith, Destiny, hammers out the sword. Delayed in glory, pensive from the murk, Vengeance brings home at last a child, to wipe out the stain of blood shed long ago.” ―...

Here Be Dragons!

Dragon Daughter by Liz Flanagan The dragons will return, one last time... On the island of Arcosi, dragons and their riders used to rule the skies. Now they are only legends, paintings and symbols: dragons are stories be read aloud at bedtime,...

Scarlett Hart Monster Hunter

by Marcus Sedgwick and Thomas Taylor Scarlett Hart is the orphaned daughter of two renowned monster hunters, and she is determined to carry on in their footsteps. In Scarlett's world the Barguest skulks in the disused mineshaft, sea monsters lurk below...

Seaglass by Eloise Williams – cover reveal!

'She will come for you.' Lark struggles to settle when her Roma family moves to a new site by the sea. Her mother is ill, her little sister Snow isn’t talking and she has fallen out with her best friend. She distracts herself looking for sea glass on the foggy beach....

We Forge The Chains We Wear In Life

In December 2017 we wrote a letter and, enclosing a book, sent it to Theresa May, British Prime Minister. The letter set out the impact of library closures, the loss of employed, qualified librarians and the loss of funding for the purchase of new books, on the...

Thornhill, by Pam Smy

2017: As she unpacks boxes in the bedroom of her new house, Ella catches a glimpse of a crumbling, forsaken house beyond the overgrown garden she sees from her window. At night however, one small light goes on in the attic window; despite the barbed-wire and the...

Celestine and the Hare

No act of kindness is ever wasted - Aesop, teller of tales c590BC If you haven’t yet found these beautiful little books, pick one up and have a look. We’ve never found a book so small that is so warm and so heartbreakingly profound. The creatures in the...

Fish Boy, by Chloe Daykin

Fish Boy by Chloe Daykin, with illustrations by Richard Jones Every now and then you read a book that is quite unlike anything else you’ve read. In Fish Boy we meet Billy, a young boy who is lonely and struggling to make friends at school; his great obsession is...

Gaslight, by Eloise Williams

Gaslight is the second novel by Eloise Williams, and it is a proper cracker of a story, a hugely exciting gas-lit romp through seedy Victorian theatre life. It is beautifully written, with both atmosphere and elegance, well-researched - and totally gripping! Where the...

Ghosts of Shanghai and Shadow of the Yangtze, by Julian Sedgwick

Ghosts of Shanghai and Shadow of the Yangtze by Julian Sedgwick Last year every other book that came into the shop seemed to have the word ‘Girl’ in the title. This year we have been inundated with books called ‘The (something) Wife’. When so many books in young adult...

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