Splish! Splash! Splosh! Wet and windy magic was at work in the bric-a-brac shop. Plop! A big drop of icy water landed on the stripy horse's nose and woke him up. When the weather turns bad in the bric-a-brac shop, Stripy Horse and his friends must save the day. With the help of Muriel, Hermann, and their new friend, Ella the flamingo-shaped umbrella, they must get to the bottom of this tropical storm before poor Roly and Pitch the salt and pepper pots get washed away. Perhaps the painting on the wall and the parrot-shaped weathervane have something to do with it . . .

Who Are You, Stripy Horse? Is the first magical picture book about a soft toy and his friends by Jim Helmore and Karen Wall. In the tick-tock quiet, a shaft of moonlight tickles the nose of something sleeping. It's a stuffed, stripy horse. He twitches. Then an enormous dusty sneeze echoes round the room. He's awake. So begins this charming story, all about a forgotten toy who can't remember his name. He is befriended by Muriel (a hummingbird who flutters off the pattern on a lamp), Hermann (a daft draught excluder), and Roly and Pitch (penguin-shaped salt and pepper shakers). Together they embark on an adventure to meet Ming, a wise and ancient Chinese vase cat, who is the only person in the shop who might be able to tell him who he is. Thrills, spills, and some seriously silly situations await him on his adventure. One of the most charming picture book characters you’ll ever meet, Stripy Horse gets up to all sorts of adventures with his friends. These night-time adventures make Stripy Horse the perfect fit for bedtime stories and children with vivid imaginations. Fans of Winnie-the-Pooh’s gentle, whimsical humour will love the innocent adventures of Stripy Horse.

Fans of the Land of Stories and the Descendants series are sure to find the lighthearted fantasy adventure of 100 Dresses a perfect fit! Inside an enchanted castle, there’s a closet—a closet with one hundred magical dresses that only Darling Dimple can wear. Each one disguises her as somebody else. It turns out that Darling needs disguises. A thief is on the loose! Someone is causing an uproar among the servants—moving things around, stealing clothes from the laundry, and even pocketing Princess Mariposa’s jewels. Then Darling and her friend Roger think they spot a ghost roaming the halls. Could the culprit be a spirit? Can Darling and Roger get to the bottom of it all? With the help of the one hundred dresses, there just might be a ghost of a chance.

From Onjali Q. Rauf, the award-winning and best-selling author of The Boy at the Back of the Class, comes another incredible story, told with humour and heart. 'The boy's an absolute menace.' 'He's a bully. A lost cause!' 'Why can't he be more like his sister?' I've been getting into trouble for as long I can remember. Usually I don't mind 'cos some of my best, most brilliant ideas have come from sitting in detention. But recently it feels like no one believes me about anything - even when I'm telling the truth! And it's only gotten worse since I played a prank on the old man who lives in the park. Everyone thinks I'm just a bully. They don't believe I could be a hero. But I'm going to prove them all wrong... Told from the perspective of a bully, this book explores themes of bullying and homelessness, while celebrating kindness, friendship and the potential everyone has to change for the good.

From the fabulous partnership of award-winning author Jim Helmore and the brilliant Richard Jones comes a stunning book about friendship. When Caro and her mum move to a new house, Caro becomes lonely. There’s only so much exploring she can do by herself! It’s not long though before she makes a new friend – The Snow Lion. He’s as white as snow, and together they have fun playing hide and seek, chasing and sliding. However, it’s soon time for Caro to venture out on her own . . . With a slighty magical, classic feel and a lovely message, The Snow Lion is a story which will appeal to children and parents alike, and the beautiful illustrations make this a book to treasure.

“An intellectual page-turner” set in a secretive countercultural community by the author of The Beans of Egypt, Maine (O, The Oprah Magazine). It’s the height of summer 1999, when local Maine newspaper the Record Sun receives numerous tipoffs from anonymous callers warning of violence, weapons stockpiling, and rampant child abuse at the nearby homeschool on Heart’s Content Road. Hungry to break into serious journalism, Ivy Morelli sets out to meet the mysterious leader of the homeschool, Gordon St. Onge—referred to by many as “The Prophet.” Soon, Ivy ingratiates herself into the sprawling Settlement, a self-sufficient counterculture community that many locals suspect to be a wild cult. Despite her initial skepticism—not to mention the Settlement’s ever-growing group of pregnant teenage girls—Ivy finds herself irresistibly drawn to Gordon. Then, a newcomer—a gifted, disturbed young girl with wild orange hair—joins the community, and falls into a complicated relationship with the charismatic Prophet. When the Record Sun finally runs its piece on the leader of the Settlement, lives will be changed both within and beyond the community, in this novel by a writer described by the New York Times Book Review as “a James Joyce of the backcountry, a Proust of rural society.”

The Singularity. It is the era of the posthuman. Artificial intelligences have surpassed the limits of human intellect. Biotechnological beings have rendered people all but extinct. Molecular nanotechnology runs rampant, replicating and reprogramming at will. Contact with extraterrestrial life grows more imminent with each new day. Struggling to survive and thrive in this accelerated world are three generations of the Macx clan: Manfred, an entrepreneur dealing in intelligence amplification technology whose mind is divided between his physical environment and the Internet; his daughter, Amber, on the run from her domineering mother, seeking her fortune in the outer system as an indentured astronaut; and Sirhan, Amber’s son, who finds his destiny linked to the fate of all of humanity. For something is systematically dismantling the nine planets of the solar system. Something beyond human comprehension. Something that has no use for biological life in any form...

Mia and Ben are the very best of friends. They live side by side at the edge of a great, wide lake and together they sail, and swing, and sing. But the thing they love the most is making paper planes. They dream of one day being able to make a plane that will fly all the way across the lake, and their planes become more and more intricate... But one day: terrible news. Ben's family are moving far, far away. How can Mia and Ben stay best friends if they are so far apart? And how will they ever realise their dream of making a plane that can fly across their lake? Find out in this moving, lyrical story of friendship and flight.

All her life she had feared death by water... Ruth Carter, her gentle husband Paul and their two children spend idyllic summers at their holiday retreat on the beautiful and rugged coast of Maine. But one year, as son Will celebrates his fourteenth birthday, a sailing trip goes tragically wrong and their beautiful, troubled daughter Josie is swept overboard. She disappears without a trace. Trapped in a spiral of guilt, grief and denial, and by the demands of her exacting legal career, Ruth finds her life beginning to fall apart. But fate has an even crueler trick up its sleeve, one which threatens to take from her everything she holds most dear. The only thing she has to keep her going is hope.

And so begins another gamewith Stripy Horse. Brightpictures and a simple rhymingtext take you on an excitinghide-and-seek adventure. Perfect to share.