This fantasy is one to make you wonder what is happening next and where it is going. With plenty of fun and excitement thrown in for good measure. Your imagination will run riot and allow you to become one with the characters. Age is not a barrier to stop you enjoying this book. Just go with the flow and enjoy. Set in the Cornish countryside where rumour, legend, suspicion and folk-law still play a part in everyday life. Where there are still tales of being Pixie Led and people that will tell of The Beast of Bodmin Moor and ghosts that walk in the road at night only to disappear when you approach, spirit Monks who walk the seafront disappearing into the waves and many other stories. Fiction or fact? I have spoken to people who would swear to the above things having happened in the recent past. The Adventures of Zia are set in modern times and there are plenty of adventures to go into my next book in the same vein. So get comfy and allow yourself to indulge in true fantasy. Can you have true fantasy? Well, read and allow yourself the added luxury of an unshackled imagination and see!!!

"Luminous, empowering, and full of heart-healing truths, this is a novel that belongs on every shelf."—Katherine Applegate, Newbery Award winning author For fans of Crenshaw and When You Trap a Tiger comes the extraordinary tale of a headstrong girl and the magical dictionary she hopes will explain the complicated feelings she can't find the right words for—or erase them altogether. Zia remembers the exact night the Shadoom arrived. One moment she was laughing with her best friends, and the next a dark room of shadows had crept into her chest. Zia has always loved words, but she can’t find a real one for the fear growing inside her. How can you defeat something if you don’t know its name? After Zia’s mom announces that her grouchy Greek yiayia is moving into their tiny apartment, the Shadoom seems here to stay. Until Zia discovers an old family heirloom: the C. Scuro Dictionary, 13th Edition. This is no ordinary dictionary. Hidden within its magical pages is a mysterious blue eraser shaped like an evil eye. When Zia starts to erase words that remind her of the Shadoom, they disappear one by one from the world around her. She finally has the confidence to befriend Alice, the new girl in sixth grade, and to perform at the Story Jamboree. But things quickly dissolve into chaos, as the words she erases turn out to be more vital than Zia knew. In this raw, funny, and at times heartbreaking middle grade debut, Bree Barton reveals how—with the right kind of help—our darkest moments can nudge us toward the light.

A Chicano PI hunts his cousin’s killer in “a compelling thriller [with] a deep-seated respect for the traditions of a people and a culture” (Booklist). The great-grandson of a legendary lawman and gunfighter, thirty-year-old Sonny Baca hopes he possesses even a tenth of El Bisabuelo’s courage. But instead of cleaning up New Mexico by hunting down dangerous desperadoes, the struggling PI looks for missing persons and deadbeat husbands. The game changes when his cousin Gloria—the first woman Sonny ever loved—is brutally slain. Her corpse is found drained of blood. A zia sun sign, the symbol on the New Mexican flag, is carved on her stomach. Gloria’s husband, Frank Dominic, a politician making a run for mayor of Albuquerque, has a powerful motive for murder. But Gloria wasn’t the first victim. A year earlier, another woman was slain in the exact same way. Is a serial killer on the loose? Or is this the handiwork of some satanic cult? Feeling his cousin’s spirit crying out for justice, Sonny and his girlfriend begin a search that takes them across New Mexico’s polluted South Valley to an environmental compound in the mountains. As Sonny moves closer to the truth, he uncovers a chilling connection between his past and a very real and present evil . . .

Far off the coast of California looms a harsh rock known as the island of San Nicholas. Dolphins flash in the blue waters around it, sea otter play in the vast kep beds, and sea elephants loll on the stony beaches. Here, in the early 1800s, according to history, an Indian girl spent eighteen years alone, and this beautifully written novel is her story. It is a romantic adventure filled with drama and heartache, for not only was mere subsistence on so desolate a spot a near miracle, but Karana had to contend with the ferocious pack of wild dogs that had killed her younger brother, constantly guard against the Aleutian sea otter hunters, and maintain a precarious food supply. More than this, it is an adventure of the spirit that will haunt the reader long after the book has been put down. Karana's quiet courage, her Indian self-reliance and acceptance of fate, transform what to many would have been a devastating ordeal into an uplifting experience. From loneliness and terror come strength and serenity in this Newbery Medal-winning classic.

“Guaranteed free of unicorns and princesses, it’s fun, empowering fiction for 5-8 year olds.” David Nicholls, author of One Day “Every young girl should read this series!” Amanda Holden “I loved the meaning of this book – we should all do more to save our world.” Florence, age 7 Join best friends Katy, Cassie and Zia on a series of amazing adventures as they work together to save the planet… Katy, Cassie and Zia find themselves transported into outer space when their rocket made out of recycled waste magically becomes life-sized. With the help of Katy’s cat Thunder, the girls navigate their way to the Wishing Star. But as they prepare to make their wishes, the friends see the destruction happening back home and realise they have a greater mission: TO SAVE PLANET EARTH.

If you have never been in love, don't read this book! If you have never thought of yourself as a little bit crazy, don't read this book! But if you believe in fairy tales and fantasy, romance and obsession, read on -- this book is for you. Zia says, "This book is for all those people who ever started doing something and became so involved that they lost all track of time, because the 'thing' that I started doing was playing bridge and the time that flew so painlessly by was my life.". Bridge My Way is the irresistible story of the world's most flamboyant bridge player -- Zia -- how he rose in a few short years from an unknown rubber bridge player to the world's most charismatic bridge star.

"Zia imagines what might happen if the hole in her pocket became big enough to fall right through"--

A bold, epic debut novel set during the war and financial crisis that defined the beginning of our century One September morning in 2008, an investment banker approaching forty, his career in collapse and his marriage unraveling, receives a surprise visitor at his West London townhouse. In the disheveled figure of a South Asian male carrying a backpack, the banker recognizes a long-lost friend, a mathematics prodigy who disappeared years earlier under mysterious circumstances. The friend has resurfaced to make a confession of unsettling power. In the Light of What We Know takes us on a journey of exhilarating scope--from Kabul to London, New York, Islamabad, Oxford, and Princeton--and explores the great questions of love, belonging, science, and war. It is an age-old story: the friendship of two men and the betrayal of one by the other. The visitor, a man desperate to climb clear of his wrong beginnings, seeks atonement; and the narrator sets out to tell his friend's story but finds himself at the limits of what he can know about the world--and, ultimately, himself. Set against the breaking of nations and beneath the clouds of economic crisis, this surprisingly tender novel chronicles the lives of people carrying unshakable legacies of class and culture as they struggle to tame their futures. In an extraordinary feat of imagination, Zia Haider Rahman has telescoped the great upheavals of our young century into a novel of rare intimacy and power.

A vivacious and endearing story of identification, values, and the rewards in looking closely and thinking imaginatively. Lali finds a little feather in the field. Who might it belong to? Lali sets out to find the feather a home, but one bird after another rejects it. The feather is too small for Rooster, too slow for Crow, and too plain for Peacock. That is until Lali decides to keep the little feather and discovers all the things she can do with it, and the other birds begin to recognize its value. Farhana Zia offers a charming tale with an inventive circular structure that reveals the importance of looking beyond first impressions. Illustrator Stephanie Fizer Coleman brings this delightful story of imagination and inspiration to life.

"When their great-aunt comes to live with Alfie and his older sister Emilia, they learn that food can not only take you places but also bring you back home. In the first book in the series, Alfie and Emilia find themselves magically transported to Naples"--