Book Band: Brown - Ideal for ages 7+ Thought-provoking contemporary fantasy from best-selling author Polly Ho-Yen. Mae spends a lot of time in hospitals. She's had asthma since she was little and sometimes she just can't breathe. She was in hospital the very first time she saw the hole - a tear in the universe which seems to appear only to her. Before she knows it she is drawn into a parallel world, where things aren't quite the same... This powerful fantasy story is full of big ideas and a great way to talk about chronic illness with children. It has beautiful black-and-white illustrations from Patricia Hu throughout, and is ideal for children who are developing as readers. The Bloomsbury Readers series is packed with book-banded stories to get children reading independently in Key Stage 2 by award-winning authors like double Carnegie Medal winner Geraldine McCaughrean and Waterstones Prize winner Patrice Lawrence. With engaging illustrations and online guided reading notes written by the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education (CLPE), this series is ideal for home and school. For more information visit www.bloomsburyreaders.com. 'Any list that brings together such a quality line up of authors is going to be welcomed ... Bloomsbury Readers are aimed squarely at children in Key Stage 2 and designed to support them as they start reading independently and while they continue to gain confidence and understanding.' Books for Keeps

Book Band: Brown - Ideal for ages 7+ Thought-provoking contemporary fantasy from best-selling author Polly Ho-Yen. Mae spends a lot of time in hospitals. She's had asthma since she was little and sometimes she just can't breathe. She was in hospital the very first time she saw the hole - a tear in the universe which seems to appear only to her. Before she knows it she is drawn into a parallel world, where things aren't quite the same... This powerful fantasy story is full of big ideas and a great way to talk about chronic illness with children. It has beautiful black-and-white illustrations from Patricia Hu throughout, and is ideal for children who are developing as readers. The Bloomsbury Readers series is packed with book-banded stories to get children reading independently in Key Stage 2 by award-winning authors like double Carnegie Medal winner Geraldine McCaughrean and Waterstones Prize winner Patrice Lawrence. With engaging illustrations and online guided reading notes written by the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education (CLPE), this series is ideal for home and school. For more information visit www.bloomsburyreaders.com. 'Any list that brings together such a quality line up of authors is going to be welcomed ... Bloomsbury Readers are aimed squarely at children in Key Stage 2 and designed to support them as they start reading independently and while they continue to gain confidence and understanding.' Books for Keeps

It's a year after the events of Shakespeare's The Tempest have taken place and Ariel has returned to the magical island. Gradually she starts to look back and reflect upon the strange characters and happenings which took place on that fateful afternoon - the magic, the murder and Prospero's sweet revenge...

Book Band: Dark Red - Ideal for ages 10+ An exciting adventure set in revolutionary France which tells the true story of a swashbuckling hero Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, whose mother was an enslaved African woman and whose father was a French noble. Alex is happy living with his brothers and sister on his father's farm on Haiti but his father wants to go back to France and can't afford to take his mixed-race children with him. Soon, Alex must fight for his freedom... and that of France. From a slave on the streets of Port au Prince to a general in the French army, the dramatic true story of Thomas-Alexandre Dumas' life (the inspiration for his son's book The Three Musketeers) is brought to life by award-winning author, Catherine Johnson. Featuring exciting black-and-white illustrations by Rachel Sanson, this book is perfect for children who are developing as readers. The Bloomsbury Readers series is packed with book-banded stories to get children reading independently in Key Stage 2 by award-winning authors like double Carnegie Medal winner Geraldine McCaughrean and Waterstones Prize winner Patrice Lawrence. With engaging illustrations and online guided reading notes written by the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education (CLPE), this series is ideal for home and school. For more information visit www.bloomsburyreaders.com. 'Any list that brings together such a quality line up of authors is going to be welcomed ... Bloomsbury Readers are aimed squarely at children in Key Stage 2 and designed to support them as they start reading independently and while they continue to gain confidence and understanding.' Books for Keeps

"Delightful." --People, Pick of the Week *Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2022 by Katie Couric Media, the CBC, the Globe and Mail, BookBub, POPSUGAR, SheReads, Women.com and more!* Natalie Jenner, the internationally bestselling author of The Jane Austen Society, returns with a compelling and heartwarming story of post-war London, a century-old bookstore, and three women determined to find their way in a fast-changing world in Bloomsbury Girls. Bloomsbury Books is an old-fashioned new and rare book store that has persisted and resisted change for a hundred years, run by men and guided by the general manager's unbreakable fifty-one rules. But in 1950, the world is changing, especially the world of books and publishing, and at Bloomsbury Books, the girls in the shop have plans: Vivien Lowry: Single since her aristocratic fiance was killed in action during World War II, the brilliant and stylish Vivien has a long list of grievances--most of them well justified and the biggest of which is Alec McDonough, the Head of Fiction. Grace Perkins: Married with two sons, she's been working to support the family following her husband's breakdown in the aftermath of the war. Torn between duty to her family and dreams of her own. Evie Stone: In the first class of female students from Cambridge permitted to earn a degree, Evie was denied an academic position in favor of her less accomplished male rival. Now she's working at Bloomsbury Books while she plans to remake her own future. As they interact with various literary figures of the time--Daphne Du Maurier, Ellen Doubleday, Sonia Blair (widow of George Orwell), Samuel Beckett, Peggy Guggenheim, and others--these three women with their complex web of relationships, goals and dreams are all working to plot out a future that is richer and more rewarding than anything society will allow.

In this delightfully witty, provocative book, literature professor and psychoanalyst Pierre Bayard argues that not having read a book need not be an impediment to having an interesting conversation about it. (In fact, he says, in certain situations reading the book is the worst thing you could do.) Using examples from such writers as Graham Greene, Oscar Wilde, Montaigne, and Umberto Eco, he describes the varieties of "non-reading"-from books that you've never heard of to books that you've read and forgotten-and offers advice on how to turn a sticky social situation into an occasion for creative brilliance. Practical, funny, and thought-provoking, How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read-which became a favorite of readers everywhere in the hardcover edition-is in the end a love letter to books, offering a whole new perspective on how we read and absorb them.

A portrait of five Concord, Massachusetts, writers whose works were at the center of mid-nineteenth-century American thought and literature evaluates their interconnected relationships, influence on each other's works, and complex beliefs.