WHS Book Review Club

'Welcome to New York City's Upper East Side, where my friends and I live and go to school and play. We're smart, we've inherited classic good looks, and we know how to party. It's a luxe life, but someone's got to live it.' The Gossip Girl series is the ultimate in glamour and cool - set in New York's glamorous Upper East Side the narrative follows the thrills and spills (with Jimmy Choo shoes and shopping at Barneys mixed in along the way) of its richest and most beautiful teenage residents.

'Gossip Girl' is the ultimate in sophistication, scandal and luxury. Publisher's Weekly is quoted: 'Gossip Girl has the effect of gossip itself - once you enter it's hard to extract yourself; teens will devour this whole'. We will be publishing the series at regular intervals throughout 2003 with a high profile, energetic and suitably cutting-edge marketing campaign. This deliciously catty and engrossing series will be the spicy vanguard for Bloomsbury pushing the bundaries into young adult fiction.
Age-range: 14+

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# posted by WHS Admin @ 12:12 pm 0 comments

Stuff is the nickname of our hero, Simon (because he knows a lot of weird stuff). Stuff's parents have split up, and his dad has brought back a new step-mum (the Sherry Trifle), a step-sister (the awful Natasha) and a radical feminist rabbit called Pankhurst (she only attacks men - spooky).

In Stuff's own words, here is how he tries (and fails) to run away from home. How he tries to get off with the beautiful Sky, and dump girlfriend Delfine (without being beaten up by her psycho brother). In fact, how to get through life as a teenage boy.

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# posted by WHS Admin @ 5:51 pm 1 comments

Indie's mum loves the colour blue. Blue is the colour of her favourite things - bluebirds, bluebells, the sky. So much so that she named her children Indigo and Misty - shades of blue, special colours, magical colours. Indie loves her mum. But blue isn't always a happy colour - and there's a lot of sad stuff in her mum's life. And now suddenly she wants them to run away from their lovely house and leave Max - mum's fella - behind.

Indie doesn't know why. Or where they're going. Or how to tell her friends. In a dingy old flat with a grumpy neighbour, no heating and only biscuits to eat, Indie begins to realise that her mum's got a secret - a reason she really needed to get away. Indie mustn't let her go near Max again - or something terrible will happen. A powerful, moving and tender book about love, family, domestic violence - and what it feels like to get the blues.

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# posted by WHS Admin @ 5:49 pm 1 comments

Sam's family are cursed with a dark and terrible secret. A secret that has its origins in a remote island off the coast of China and has haunted every generation of his family for hundreds of years. Now the curse is about to claim Sam as its next victim.

It starts with an itchy rash that spreads all over his body. Then the feeling of something changing within him, coming alive. And why has he become obsessed with the marshes and their cool, muddy waters? Why has he stopped seeing his friends and going to school? As rumours begin to spread about sightings of a sinister creature on the outskirts of town, Sam is forced to face a horrifying truth. One that could destroy him...

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# posted by WHS Admin @ 5:48 pm 1 comments

A gripping tale of smugglers, clifftop chases and graveyard encounters...Will Finch lives with his mother at the Angel Inn. One night Will is woken by footsteps outside his bedroom window and sees a line of lanterns moving across the marshes towards the beach.

Will follows at a distance and finds most of the Angel's regulars helping to land the cargo of a ship anchored out in the mouth of the cove. But Will has left his broken lantern on the path - and the smugglers can't risk a blabbermouth. The only option is to cut out the boy's tongue...

# posted by WHS Admin @ 5:47 pm 0 comments

Grey Arthur is a ghost. Not a chain-rattling, dramatic-wailing type of ghost. He's a hazy, grey and not very ghost-like at all. Discover what happens to him in this funny first novel by new talent Louise Arnold, when he decides to become lonely Tom's Invisible Friend...Grey Arthur is a very normal ghost. Too normal for his own liking. He's so normal he doesn't even know what group he belongs to: not scary enough to be a Screamer, or naughty enough to be a Poltergeist...each different thing Arthur tries to be, he fails.

One afternoon, when Grey Arthur is thinking very despondently how unfair life is, he senses the exact same emotion coming from a boy far away. And as he follows his instincts he reaches Tom's house. Tom is a very normal boy, with brown hair and brown eyes and normal parents. But somehow people at school don't seem to think that. He doesn't fit in. People call him weird. When Grey Arthur senses Tom's unhappiness he realises they're not so different after all. He doesn't feel he fits in with the other ghosts, either; and that is when he realises what he is going to be. He's going to be Tom's official Invisible Friend and help him solve his problems.

# posted by WHS Admin @ 5:44 pm 0 comments

Conor and Grace are twins, recently orphaned after their widowed father's death. Rather than being adopted by the town's busy-bodies, they decide to set sail for new pastures in their father's last single possession, his sailing boat. But a vicious storm sees their boat capsize and the twins are separated. Two mysterious ships sail to their rescue - each picking up one twin before disappearing into the mist.

Conor wakes to find himself on a pirate ship and is soon being trained up with a cutlass. Meanwhile Grace finds herself locked in a darkened room, as the vampirates wait for night to fall and their feasting to begin...Determined to find each other, yet intrigued by their new shipmates, the twins are about to embark on the biggest adventure of their life...

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# posted by WHS Admin @ 5:40 pm 0 comments

When Jimmy is chased across London a secret unknown to him about himself unfolds. Jimmy is a normal boy at heart but it all changes when the men come for him.

Who are the men chasing him? Why do they want him? Why can he do these extraordinary things? Who is behind it all? What is going to happen to him?

Follow Jimmy Coates as the men chase across the streets of London and find out the mystery of his life.

# posted by WHS Admin @ 10:21 pm 3 comments

Darkness falls...Despair abounds...Evil reigns...Eragon and his dragon, Saphira, have just saved the rebel state from destruction by the mighty forces of King Galbatorix, cruel ruler of the Empire Now Eragon must travel to Ellesmera, land of the elves, for further training in magic and swordsmanship, the vital skills of the Dragon Rider.

It is the journey of a lifetime, filled with awe-inspiring new places and people, each day a fresh adventure. But chaos and betrayal plague him at every turn. Eragon isn't sure whom he can trust. Meanwhile, his cousin Roran must fight a new battle back home in Carvahall - one that puts Eragon in even graver danger. Will the king's dark hand strangle all resistance? Eragon may not escape with even his life...

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# posted by WHS Admin @ 5:11 pm 1 comments

When Eragon finds a polished stone in the forest, he thinks it is the lucky discovery of a poor farm boy; perhaps it will buy his family meat for the winter. But when the stone brings a dragon hatchling, Eragon soon realizes he has stumbled upon a legacy nearly as old as the Empire itself.

Overnight his simple life is shattered and he is thrust into a perilous new world of destiny, magic and power. With only an ancient sword and the advice of an old storyteller for guidance, Eragon and the fledgling dragon must navigate the dangerous terrain and dark enemies of an Empire ruled by a king whose evil knows no bounds. Can Eragon take up the mantle of the legendary Dragon Riders? The fate of the Empire may rest in his hands...

Click here to see the movie website for the book.

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# posted by WHS Admin @ 12:18 pm 2 comments

The long-buried secrets of the Old Kingdom and the Ninth Gate are revealed in the sequel to Sabriel and Lirael. Orannis, the Destroyer, has been freed from its subterranean prison and now seeks to unleash its terrible powers. Only Lirael, Abhorsen-in-Waiting, has any chance of stopping this enemy of all Life.

As she and her companions -- Sameth, the Disreputable Dog and Mogget -- set out on their fated journey, Lirael has no idea of what lies ahead. Only days earlier, Lirael was merely a Second Assistant Librarian.

Now, with only a vision from the Clayr to guide her and without the experience of Abhorsen Sabriel and King Touchstone, she must search both Life and Death for some means to defeat the Destroyer. Before it is too late!

# posted by WHS Admin @ 11:32 am 0 comments

When the future is unclear, who holds the key to destiny? Sequel to the spellbinding, award-winning fantasy adventure, SABRIEL. Lirael has never felt like a true daughter of the Clayr. Abandoned by her mother and ignorant of her father's identity, Lirael resembles no one else in her large, extended family living in the Clayr's Glacier. She doesn't even have the Sight -- the ability to See into the present and possible futures -- that is the very birthright of the Clayr.

Nonetheless, it is Lirael in whose hands the fate of the Old Kingdom lies. she must undertake a desperate mission under the growing shadow of an ancient evil -- one that opposes the Royal Family, blocks the Sight of the Clayr, and threatens to break the very boundary between Life and Death itself.

With only her faithful companion, the Disreputable Dog, to help her, Lirael must find the courage to seek her own hidden destiny. Garth Nix draws readers deeper into the magical landscape of the Old Kingdom and weaves a spellbinding tale of discovery, destiny and danger.

# posted by WHS Admin @ 11:31 am 0 comments

Who will guard the living when the dead arise? Sabriel is sent as a child across the Wall to the safety of a school in Ancelstierre. Away from magic; away from the Dead. After receiving a cryptic message from her father, 18-year-old Sabriel leaves her ordinary school and returns across the Wall into the Old Kingdom. Fraught with peril and deadly trickery, her journey takes her to a world filled with parasitical spirits, Mordicants, and Shadow Hands -- for her father is none other than The Abhorsen.

His task is to lay the disturbed dead back to rest. This obliges him -- and now Sabriel, who has taken on her father's title and duties -- to slip over the border into the icy river of Death, sometimes battling the evil forces that lurk there, waiting for an opportunity to escape into the realm of the living. Desperate to find her father, and grimly determined to help save the Old Kingdom from destruction by the horrible forces of the evil undead, Sabriel endures almost impossible challenges whilst discovering her own supernatural abilities -- and her destiny.

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# posted by WHS Admin @ 11:30 am 0 comments

Evil pixie, Opal Koboi, is back and she's more dangerous than ever. This time she doesn't just want power over the fairy People - this time she wants the humans too. Captain Holly Short is the only fairy with a hope of stopping her, but as Holly knows, it takes one genius criminal mastermind to fight another. But the 14-year-old genius that Holly is thinking of doesn't even remember that fairies exist. How is she going to convince Artemis Fowl to help her stop Opal? Gold usually does the trick, and this time is should be no different. Or is Artemis changing?

# posted by WHS Admin @ 10:45 am 0 comments

Thirteen-year-old criminal mastermind Artemis Fowl has constructed a supercomputer from stolen fairy technology. In the wrong hands, it could be fatal for humans and fairies alike. But no need to worry, Artemis has a brilliant plan. He's not going to use the computer; he's just going to show it to a ruthless American businessman with Mafia connections. His bodyguard, Butler, will be with him. What could possibly go wrong...?

# posted by WHS Admin @ 10:42 am 1 comments

Someone has been supplying Class A illegal human power sources to the goblins. Captain Holly Short of the LEPrecon Unit is sure that her arch-enemy, thirteen-year-old Artemis Fowl, is responsible. But is he? Artemis has his own problems to deal with: his father is being held to ransom and only a miracle will save him. Maybe this time a brilliant plan just won't be enough. Maybe this time Artemis needs help...

# posted by WHS Admin @ 10:41 am 1 comments

Lyra lies sleeping in a cave near a rainbow, drugged into unconsciousness by her mother, Mrs Coulter, whose love for her daughter closely rivals her own ruthless ambition. Now, the latter threatens to overcome the former, as she strives to prevent the events which are dependent on the decisions Lyra is fated to make.

Meanwhile, Will, scarred and traumatised after his last, fatal meeting with his father, seeks blindly for her, with only two of Lord Asriel's angels as companions on his dangerous search.

The two are fated to meet once more, however, and begin their most treacherous journey. For Lyra owes a great debt, and she must repay it-she must rescue her friend from the Land of the Dead. Neither are prepared for the terrible sacrifice they must endure, or for the universal consequences of their actions. Lyra and Will must play their part in the war between the worlds and heaven...

# posted by WHS Admin @ 10:30 am 0 comments