No wait, No fuss – April's collection

Welcome to the world of Nocturnia, where darkness reigns supreme, glitter is terrifying and unicorns are the stuff of nightmares! Amelia Fang would much rather hang out with her pet pumpkin Squashy and her friends Florence the yeti (DON’T CALL HER BEAST!) and Grimaldi the reaper than dance at her parents’ annual Barbaric Ball.

And when the King’s spoiled son Tangine captures Squashy, Amelia and her friends must escape the party to plan a daring rescue! In their race against time, they begin to realise things in Nocturnia may not be quite what they seem …
Join Amelia on her very first adventure. She won’t bite!

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Zoe Thorne
Suitable for ages 7+

Here be Dragons! Magic! Danger!
Odo (seventh child of the village miller) and Eleanor (always looking for adventure) stumble upon a sword in a dried-up river outside their village. Eleanor (strong and able) tries to extract the sword but is unable to, and it is Odo who is surprisingly successful. It is even more surprising that the sword,once pulled out, starts to talk. And rather annoying when the talking sword turns out to be rather grumpy, stubborn, and, at times, catastrophically wrong.

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Oliver Hembrough
Suitable for ages 8+

Stanley Yelnats’s family has a history of bad luck, so when a miscarriage of justice sends him to Camp Green Lake Juvenile Detention Centre (which isn’t green and doesn’t have a lake), he is not surprised.

Every day he and the other inmates are told to dig a hole, five feet wide by five feet deep, reporting anything they find. The evil warden claims that it is character building, but this is a lie, and Stanley must dig up the truth.
Wonderfully inventive, compelling and hilarious, Louis Sachar has created a masterpiece.

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Kerry Beyer
Suitable for ages 10+

Effie Truelove has made a promise to keep her grandfather’s magical books safe from danger. Whatever it takes. But it’s not always easy when you’re a pupil at the Tusitala School for the Gifted, Troubled and Strange.

Together with her new school-friends, Maximilian, Wolf, Lexy and Raven, Effie must travel to the mysterious Otherworld and brave the terrifying Diberi, a secret organisation with plans that could destroy the entire universe.

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Roger Allam
Suitable for ages 10+

For Penelope, wife of Odysseus, maintaining a kingdom while her husband was off fighting the Trojan war was not a simple business. Already aggrieved that he had been lured away due to the shocking behaviour of her beautiful cousin Helen, Penelope must bring up her wayward son, face down scandalous rumours and keep over a hundred lustful, greedy and bloodthirsty suitors at bay…

And then, when Odysseus finally returns and slaughters the murderous suitors, he brutally hangs Penelope’s twelve beloved maids. What were his motives? And what was Penelope really up to?

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Laural Merlington
Fiction

Suddenly – tomorrow or the day after – girls find that with a flick of their fingers, they can inflict agonizing pain and even death. With this single twist, the four lives at the heart of Naomi Alderman’s extraordinary, visceral novel are utterly transformed, and we look at the world in an entirely new light.
What if the power to hurt were in women’s hands?

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Adjoa Andoh, Thomas Judd, Emma Fenney, Naomi Alderman and Phil Nightingale
Fiction

Stepsister takes up where Cinderella’s tale ends. We meet Isabelle, the younger of Cinderella’s two stepsisters. Ella is considered beautiful; stepsister Isabelle is not. Isabelle is fearless, brave, and strong-willed. She fences better than any boy, and takes her stallion over jumps that grown men fear to attempt. It doesn’t matter, though; these qualities are not valued in a girl. Others have determined what is beautiful, and Isabelle does not fit their definition. Isabelle must face down the demons that drove her cruel treatment of Ella, challenge her own fate and maybe even redefine the very notion of beauty . . .
Cinderella is about a girl who was bullied; Stepsister is about the bully. We all root for the victims, we want to see them triumph. But what about the bullies? Is there hope for them? Can a mean girl change? Can she find her own happily ever after?

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Helen Duff
Fiction

This is a story of something like survival.
Sal planned it for almost a year before they ran. She nicked an Ordnance Survey map from the school library. She bought a compass, a Bear Grylls knife, waterproofs and a first aid kit from Amazon using credit cards she’d robbed. She read the SAS Survival Handbook and watched loads of YouTube videos.

And now Sal knows a lot of stuff. Like how to build a shelter and start a fire. How to estimate distances, snare rabbits and shoot an airgun. And how to protect her sister, Peppa. Because Peppa is ten, which is how old Sal was when Robert started on her.

Told in Sal’s distinctive voice, and filled with the silent, dizzying beauty of rural Scotland, Sal is a disturbing, uplifting story of survival, of the kindness of strangers, and the irrepressible power of sisterly love; a love that can lead us to do extraordinary and unimaginable things.

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Sharon Rooney
Fiction

WIDOWS is a fast-paced heist thriller with an all female cast you won’t forget. Facing life alone, they turned to crime together.
A security van heist goes disastrously wrong and three women are left widowed.
When Dolly Rawlins discovers her gang boss husband’s plans for the failed hijack, an idea starts to form . . .
Could she and the other wives finish the job their husbands started?
As the women rehearse the raid, it becomes clear that someone else must have been involved.
But only three bodies were found in the wreckage.
Who was the fourth man?
And where is he now?

Available as an eBook and eAudiobook
Narrated by Ann Mitchell
Fiction

In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. But Circe has neither the look nor the voice of divinity, and is scorned and rejected by her kin. Increasingly isolated, she turns to mortals for companionship, leading her to discover a power forbidden to the gods: witchcraft.

When love drives Circe to cast a dark spell, wrathful Zeus banishes her to the remote island of Aiaia. There she learns to harness her occult craft, drawing strength from nature. But she will not always be alone; many are destined to pass through Circe’s place of exile, entwining their fates with hers. The messenger god, Hermes. The craftsman, Daedalus. A ship bearing a golden fleece. And wily Odysseus, on his epic voyage home.

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Perdita Weeks
Fiction

The Center for women’s reproductive health offers a last chance at hope – but nobody ends up there by choice.
Its very existence is controversial, and to the demonstrators who barricade the building every day, the service it offers is no different from legalised murder.
Now life and death decisions are being made horrifyingly real: a lone protester with a gun has taken the staff, patients and visitors hostage.

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Bahni Turpin
Fiction

‘Somebody’s going to be murdered at the ball tonight. It won’t appear to be a murder and so the murderer won’t be caught. Rectify that injustice and I’ll show you the way out.’

It is meant to be a celebration but it ends in tragedy. As fireworks explode overhead, Evelyn Hardcastle, the young and beautiful daughter of the house, is killed. But Evelyn will not die just once. Until Aiden – one of the guests summoned to Blackheath for the party – can solve her murder, the day will repeat itself, over and over again. Every time ending with the fateful pistol shot.

The only way to break this cycle is to identify the killer. But each time the day begins again, Aiden wakes in the body of a different guest. And someone is determined to prevent him ever escaping Blackheath …

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Jot Davies
Fiction

We have more stuff than we could ever need – clothes we don’t wear, kit we don’t use, and toys we don’t play with. But having everything we thought we wanted isn’t making us happier. It’s bad for the planet. It’s cluttering up our homes. It’s making us feel ‘stuffocated’ and stressed – and it might even be killing us.

In this groundbreaking book, trend forecaster James Wallman finds that a rising number of people are turning their backs on all-you-can-get consumption, from the telecoms exec who’s sold almost everything he owns, to the well-off family who have moved into a remote mountain cabin.

Wallman’s solution to our clutter crisis is less extreme, but equally fundamental. We have to transform what we value. We have to focus less on possessions and more on experiences. Rather than a new watch or another pair of shoes, we should invest in shared experiences like holidays and time with friends.

With intriguing insights on psychology, economics and culture, Stuffocation is a vital manifesto for change. It has inspired those who have read it to be happier and healthier, and to live more, with less.

Available as an eAudiobook
Narrated by Kris Dyer
Non-Fiction