Aspiring writer Mags Clarke has just moved with her mother to a new area after the death of her father. Because her feet are usually firmly planted on the ground, Mags is cautious about befriending Gillian, whom she enchantingly finds playing the violin high up in the trees near her house. But th...
I don’t know whether it was good luck or the good efforts of the other boyers. Or maybe there were no polar bears at all in that area. Maybe the grown-ups just wanted us to feel important. I woke up feeling stiff and giddy. I rubbed my eyes with my hands and smelt the smel...
The birds looked as if they might swoop down at any moment and swipe your eye out. On he toiled after Rosheen, up into the dark again. He didn’t like the dark and he didn’t like the height. He felt as if he might go rolling back down the stairs at any minute. But he kept g...
She found Edmund still half-conscious, with Grandmama bending over him. The oil lamp still burned on the tallboy, and the room was full of its soft light. Edmund’s breathing was fast and shallow, and the sound of it seemed to fill Amelia’s ears. His face, which had been pale when she left, was br...
‘Nowhere,’ he said. ‘But you must be somewhere,’ she argued. ‘I’m there all right,’ said Laurence. ‘But you can’t see me.’ ‘You mean you’re invisible?’ ‘No. I can see me, so I can’t be invisible. Disappearing has to do with making people believe I’m...
She creaked the door open. The shed smelt of earth and onions and green firewood, and it was cold, but at least it was out of the weather. She could hear Patrick’s breathing, like a cat with a cold snoring in a corner, but she couldn’t quite see him in the dim interior of the shed. She put the oi...