Billie Templar desperately wants her dad to come home. He's a soldier and has been away for seven weeks, fighting for 'Queen and country' - but how can the two of them possibly defend their four-year record of winning the three-legged race at the school carnival if he's thousands of miles away? Then, when one of the other soldiers in Dad's regiment is seriously hurt, the stakes get even higher. Billie needs her dad home, sharpish. There's only one person who can help - Her Majesty. She's in charge of the army, right? She can send Dad home! Billie tries to get inside Buckingham Palace to sort it out, but it's not that easy. So, with the help of shy Sarah and allergy-prone Jake, the school brass band and a motley team of enthusiastic old-age pensioners, Billie hatches a fool-proof plan to get the Queen to her little village instead... Both laugh-out-loud funny and utterly heart-wrenching, and featuring an unforgettable cast of sweet, crazy characters, Billie's journey will have you laughing and crying in equal measure.

Matilda loves science and inventing. Her heroes are Marie Curie, Leonardo da Vinci and Thomas Edison, and one day she wants to be a famous inventor herself. So when she doesn’t win the school science fair, she’s devastated – especially as the judges didn’t believe she'd come up with her entry on her own. Because she's a girl. When Matilda shares her woes with her Grandma Joss, she's astonished to learn her grandma was once a scientist herself – an astrophysicist, who discovered her very own planet. Trouble is, Grandma Joss was also overlooked – her boss, Professor Smocks, stole her discovery for himself. And he's about to be presented with a Nobel Prize. Matilda concocts a plan. They'll crash the award ceremony and tell everyone the truth! So begins a race against time - and against Matilda's strict mum and dad! - on a journey through Paris, Hamburg and Stockholm, and on which they encounter a famous film star, a circus, and a wanted diamond thief...

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