Books for Teens

Enter a darkly dystopian world full of eerie folklore, in which illness and difference have been prohibited. But from deep beneath the earth, a rebellion is rising... Perfect
for fans of Never Let Me Go and The Luminaries.

Ora has always been fascinated by chilling fairy
stories of the Vulpine – the mythical,
fox-like monsters who live below ground, emerging at night to snatch 'imperfect' babies and children. Because Ora knows that disability and illness have no place in her world. To succeed is to be genetically ‘perfect’, just like her best friend Casta and his family.

Then, one day, Casta’s baby sister disappears. And Ora’s mother reveals a long-buried secret: Ora herself has a genetic illness that affects her lungs... And she's about to be found out.

Desperate for answers and sanctuary, Ora decides to do the unthinkable and seek out the fabled Vulpine. And below the earth, she discovers a hidden world that turns everything she has been taught upside-down...

• A unique
  and powerful story about stepping into your power and creating a better world, with a brilliant cast of disabled heroes, from an author whose own experiences of chronic illness inform Ora's.
  

• A chilling dystopian world filled with eerie science fiction and a sweet, slow-burn romance.

Control the story, control the world...

Nesta believes in the fairy tales - the true stories of powerful magical women who shaped and ruled the world decades ago.

But the world has changed since then, and now, she is forbidden from wandering too far from the isolated woodland cottage where she lives with her grandmother. Nesta longs more than anything to see the city that lies beyond the forest, and when her grandmother is abducted, she gets her chance, journeying there in the hope of rescuing her.

But once there, she is horrified to see her grandmother's warnings were true: girls are forced to wear certain clothes and punished if they don't behave in certain ways. The city's Authorities have rewritten history, replacing the fairytale heroines with weak girls who must rely on men.

Worse still - everyone believes this is how the world has always been.

Only Nesta knows the truth. But truth is a dangerous thing, and suddenly she finds herself a target. Can she evade the Authorities long enough to rescue her grandmother and liberate everyone else, bringing magic back into the world?

• The Handmaid's Tale meets The Brother's Grimm in this thrilling dystopian fantasy

• A feminist fairy tale retelling which will make you rethink traditional stories forever

• A stunning cover by Noma Bar, the illustrator of Margaret Atwood's book covers