New Children's Book - Picks For The Month Of March 2011

                                 

Andy McNab - DropZone:Terminal Velocity - Published by Doubleday - 3 March 2011

The Raiders are a talented young skydiving team - with a secret. They are also a highly trained group of covert operatives, carrying out deniable missions for Britain's intelligence services. Under the demanding guidance of their ice-cold leader, an ex SAS explosives expert with many live covert special ops missions into active war zones behind him, the Raiders are developing into an impressive unit.

This time, the mission lands Ethan and the team in the most perilous adventure of their careers. The bodies of homeless teenagers are turning up dumped on the street, having been beaten to death. At first no one really seems to care, but then one survives long enough to talk of being forced to fight in a cage, and the authorities suspect organised crime. But they have no luck cracking the impenetrable wall of silence surrounding the organisation. They need a teenager, trained in hand-to-hand combat, to go in undercover. Ethan's the obvious choice...

                                 

Jonathan Maberry - Rot & Ruin - Published by Simon & Schuster - 3 March 2011

Nearly fourteen years ago a freak virus swept across the world turning those infected from the living into the undead. Benny Imura has grown-up never knowing anything different; his last memories of his parents tainted by the image of them becoming zombies. Now Benny is fifteen, and his brother Tom wants him to join the "family business" and train as a zombie killer. The last thing Benny wants is to work with Tom --- but at least the job should be an easy ride. Then the brothers head into the Rot and Ruin, an area full of wandering zombies, and Benny realises that being a bounty hunter isn't just about whacking zombies. As he's confronted with the truths about the world around him, Benny finds his beliefs challenged and makes the most terrifying discovery of all, that sometimes the worst monsters you can imagine, are human...

                                   

Frances Hardinge - Twilight Robbery - Published by Macmillan Children's - 4 March 2011

Mosca Mye and Eponymous Clent are in trouble again. Escaping disaster by the skin of their teeth, they find refuge in Toll, the strange gateway town where visitors may neither enter nor leave without paying a price. By day, the city is well-mannered and orderly; by night, it’s the haunt of rogues and villains. Wherever there’s a plot, there’s sure to be treachery, and wherever there’s treachery, there’s sure to be trouble – and where there’s trouble, Clent, Mosca and the web-

footed apocalypse Saracen can’t be far behind. But as past deeds catch up with them and old

enemies appear, it looks as if this time there’s no way out . 

                              

                                   

Alex Woolf - Chronosphere Book1:Time out of Time - Published by BookHouse - 1 March 2011

Is your life rushing by too fast? No time to stop and smell the roses? Ever wanted a little time out? What if you could buy a year out of time, free to relax, play and party all you liked, safe in the knowledge that at the end of it all you'd be returned back to the moment you left? Ask Raffi Delgado. He knows all about it. Set in the late 22nd century, Chronosphere is a science fiction series which follows the adventures of teenager Raffi and his friends Dario, Jonah, Lastara and Sal in the Chronosphere, the place you go when you've bought time out of time. At first all is well, but something disturbing bubbles beneath the glossy exterior of the 'paradise' that is the Chronosphere. In Book One, 'Time Out of Time', teenagers go missing and the Secrocon Police start arresting people by dilating them to normal time, causing them to freeze. When Dario and Raffi are arrested and sent to a horrific subterranean gulag, they discover a girl who is living her life backwards, but why? And how? With mystery, fun, danger, twists and turns, Chronosphere is a esmerising glimpse into a dark future where the fun of hoverbiking, air-tennis and trips to the holoplex are all held in check by the firm grip of a police state. For fans of the sci-fi genre and also those who are looking to get started.

                                   

Mark Robson - The Devils Triangle - Published by - Simon & Schuster -  31 March 2011

The Bermuda Triangle has cast a shadow over Sam and Niamh Cutlers' lives since their mother vanished nine years ago. Her whereabouts remains a mystery and every year they return to the Florida Keys with their father, Matt, who is obsessed with solving the haunting puzzle. But Sam is bored with lazing around by the pool while his father hunts for the truth. Craving excitement, he and his friend, Callum, "borrow" Matt's boat. At first it's great fun, but when they find themselves marooned in a terrifying land, the boys realise they too have fallen victim to the Triangle's 

mysterious effects. Can they find a way home, or will they be......