Showing titles in Historical Fiction

For the people who live on the banks of the Thames, the river is a living, breathing thing. It can take your treasures. It can hide your treasures. And, sometimes, it can give them back. Bo and Billy are two children who have never met. Billy is an orphan. Bo’s dad died when she was small and now her brother is off to war. Both children are poor, but they have each found half of a priceless treasure, given up by the river. A treasure which – when the pieces are reunited – holds the power to give back to one of them the most precious thing they have ever lost.

Dilly loved a good murder. Not a REAL murder. A made-up murder. One you would find in a murder mystery novel. Sherlock Holmes was her favourite detective, so much so that she had named her dog Watson after his faithful companion. Dilly had trained her Watson to sniff out clues and follow scent trails. Something he would happily do for a dog biscuit. Or two. So far, Dilly and Watson hadn’t had much luck cracking cases – beyond lost cats, or missing biscuits that turned out to have been eaten all along.

1940. Britain is at war with Nazi Germany. Eleven-year-old Eric spends his days at the place that makes him most happy: London Zoo. And there’s one animal in particular he loves: Gertrude the gorilla. With bombs falling all over London, Eric must rescue Gertrude. Together with his Uncle Sid, a keeper at the zoo, the three go on the run. But while hiding out at the seaside they uncover a top-secret Nazi plot....

As the war with Mevolent rages on, the Dead Men are dispatched to a walled town in the Tuscan hills – not to assassinate the Lord of the Dark Sorcerers, but to save him. A rift has opened to a hellish dimension where a being of devastating power awaits, and only Mevolent is strong enough to seal it and save the world.

It is 1910 and Maia, tragically orphaned at 13, has been sent from England to start a new life with distant relatives in Manaus, hundreds of miles up the Amazon. She is accompanied by an eccentric and mysterious governess who has secret reasons of her own for making the journey. Both soon discover an exotic world bursting with new experiences in this highly colourful, joyous, and award-winning adventure.

London, 1876. Hetty Feather is just a tiny baby when her mother leaves her at the Foundling Hospital. The Hospital cares for abandoned children - but Hetty must live with a foster family until she is big enough to go to school. Life in the countryside is hard but she has 'brothers' Jem and Gideon to play with, and together they sneak off to visit the travelling circus. Hetty is mesmerised by the show, especially Madame Adeline and her performing horses.

After defeating the terrifying Necromuse and his mysterious orchestra, all Amelia Jones hopes for is a return to normal. But to her surprise, her class is sent to Europe for a month of study abroad. This seems like the perfect escape from all her problems, but not long after they land in Salzburg, Austria, danger haunts their steps. A street musician claims there is something wrong with Amelia’s magic, odd visions of the past appear around the city, and Amelia finds a strange message preserved in a museum—a message she fears was left by the Necromuse.

America. The 1960s. Stuck on a remote farm with her awful aunt, twelve-year-old orphan Ruth spends every night gazing at the stars, dreaming of adventure. One night she spots a flying saucer blazing across the sky…before crash-landing in a field. When the spaceship opens and reveals a mysterious alien, all Ruth’s dreams come true. But does this visitor from another planet have a giant secret?

Dodger is a tosher – a sewer scavenger living in the squalor of Dickensian London. Everyone who is nobody knows Dodger. Anyone who is anybody doesn’t.But when he rescues a young girl from a beating, suddenly everybody wants to know him.And Dodger’s tale of skulduggery, dark plans and even darker deeds begins.

Edie is fascinated by Victorian times, and she's just desperate to be cast in the lead role of her drama club production of Oliver. When she's given a real Victorian notebook she's determined to write the best story ever, all about a girl in a workhouse. But when she starts writing, something strange happens. Edie finds herself in Victorian London. She feels the same, but everything around her is completely different to what she knows. Soon, she realises she's living the life of another Edie Trimmer—and is in danger of being sent to a real workhouse!

When Col's childhood imaginary friends come to life, he discovers a world where myths and legends are real. Accompanied by his guardians - a six-foot tiger, a badger in a waistcoat and a miniature knight - Col must race to Blitz-bombed London to save his sister. But there are darker forces at work, even more than the Nazi bombings. Soon Col is pursued by the terrifying Midwinter King, who is determined to bring an eternal darkness down over everything.

A wonderful new story starring old friends and new from the much-beloved Victorian world of Hetty Feather. Rose Rivers lives in a beautiful house with her artist father, her difficult, fragile mother and her many siblings. She has everything money can buy - beautiful dresses, horse-riding lessons, books - but she’s not satisfied. Why can’t she be sent away to a good school like her twin brother? Why can’t she learn to become a famous artist like her father or his friend Paris Walker? Why is life so unfair for people who were not born rich?

Late summer, 1940. Hitler has conquered France. Now he intends to cross the Channel and defeat Britain before winter arrives. A group of young refugees led by British spy Charles Henderson faces a stark choice: to head south into the safety of neutral Spain or go north on a risky mission to sabotage the German invasion plans. For official purposes, these children do not exist.

Award-winning, best-selling and beloved Jacqueline Wilson tells the fascinating, moving story of a girl sent away from home as an evacuee during the Second World War. September, 1939. As the Second World War begins, 10-year-old Shirley is sent away on a train with her schoolmates. She doesn't know where she's going, or what's going to happen to her when she gets there. All she has been told is that she's going on 'a little holiday'.

When first published, Walker’s versions of the Iliad and the Odyssey attracted attention for the quality of the writing. Multi-award-winning author Gillian Cross makes two of the greatest stories in the world come alive for children in her strong, clear, deceptively simple retellings, which are faithful to the spirit and structure of Homer’s epic poems, and this new bind-up in a friendly format comes complete with an introduction.

A new sensation grips London – a poisoner who strikes without a trace, leaving victims mad with terror...and then dead. Is there a cure for the Black Terror? To find out, Wild Boy and Clarissa must catch the killer. Their hunt will lead them from the city's vilest slums to its grandest palaces and to a darkness at the heart of its very highest society.

It is 1940 and William, 12, Edmund, 11, and Anna, nine, aren't terribly upset by the death of the not-so-grandmotherly grandmother who has taken care of them since their parents died. But the children do need a guardian, and in the dark days of World War II London, those are in short supply, especially if they hope to stay together. Could the mass wartime evacuation of children from London to the countryside be the answer?

Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong are in Egypt, where they are taking a cruise along the Nile. They are hoping to see some ancient temples and a mummy or two; what they get, instead, is murder. Also travelling on the SS Hatshepsut is a mysterious society called the Breath of Life: a group of genteel English ladies and gentlemen, who believe themselves to be reincarnations of the ancient pharaohs. Three days into the cruise their leader, Theodora Miller, is found dead in her cabin, stabbed during the night.

At the outbreak of World War 1, Joey, young Albert's beloved horse, is sold to the cavalry and shipped to France. He's soon caught up in enemy fire and fate takes him on an extraordinary odyssey, serving on both sides before finding himself alone in no man's land. But Albert cannot forget Joey and, still not old enough to enlist, he embarks on a treacherous mission to the trenches to find him and bring him home....

It is the summer of 1940. The world is at war. These days, you don't know who you can trust or who might be a secret spy… Maths whizz Jakob Novis has been recruited to the secret codebreaking centre at Bletchley Park. As Jakob works to crack the Nazi's Enigma cipher, his younger sister Lizzie is busy on an undercover mission of her own: to find their mother. Filled with codes to decipher and mysteries to unravel, this is the unputdownable historical adventure that will have you on the edge of your seats.