Pil Van Martin - The Spick and the Span - Published by HarperCollins Children’s Books (31 July 2025) - ISBN-13 : 978-0008724788 - Paperback - Age: 8+
Imaginative, magical, wildly funny, and with a truly unique world, The Spick and the Span is an extraordinary, exciting fantasy middle grade adventure – perfect for fans of Jessica Townsend's Nevermoor, Jonathan Stroud's Lockwood and Co, Diana Wynne Jones' Howl's Moving Castle, and Terry Pratchett's Discworld.
Thanks to many generations of careless magicians, the city of Helm is overflowing with magic, which has made it a very dangerous place to live. Leave anything alone for too long and it will transform into something else: your house will turn to gingerbread, your teapot will start pouring pond water or – if you're really unlucky – your floor will turn to lava.
The magicians liked to pretend it’s them who keep the worst magical hiccups in check, but the real heroes of the whole sorry situation are of a wholly different occupation: equally well known but decidedly less respected.
The heroes of the city of Helm are the cleaners.
Ward, an ambitious twelve-year-old cleaner, wants nothing more than to belong to the League of Cleaners, who will grant him the prestige and popularity he's been looking for all his life – if only he can pass three near-impossible tests. Struggling toward this goal with a team he doesn't trust, Ward's world is upended when his friend disappears and mysterious magic-eating monsters appear all over the city and start tearing holes in the fabric of reality. Suddenly his ambitions are the least of his problems…
Hugely funny and exciting, and with an incredibly imaginative, original story, The Spick and the Span is the unmissable fantasy middle grade debut of 2025 – you'll never look at magic the same way again…
Marie-Louise Fitzpatrick - The Museum of Lost Umbrellas - Published by Faber & Faber (31 July 2025) - ISBN-13 : 978-0571385720 - Paperback - Age: 8+
Discover a magical island where the houses grant you wishes and the alleyways are secret portals . . .
Faber is proud to launch a show-stopping debut fantasy middle-grade series, The Cloud Witch Chronicles, from award-winning Marie-Louise Fitzpatrick!
When Dilly arrives on the island of Ollipest, she is unsure what to expect from her new life . . . She certainly doesn't expect to find magic!
Until now, the magic of Ollipest Island has been a well-kept secret. Then the Museum of Lost Umbrellas opens after many years of closure . . .
And when the museum attracts some unsavoury anti-magic outsiders, Dilly must unlock her ancestral powers to help keep the island safe.
A dazzling, epic adventure where witches fly with umbrellas, magical dogs walk out of the sea and pet parrots suddenly become humans. This will keep readers on their edge of the seats and leave them desperate for the next instalment.
When the Faerie folk flee their world and come to ours, running from the nightmare of war, nobody in the everyday knows what to do. So they are locked away.
Thirteen-year-old Samm Wolfback lives in Glass Forest, a sprawling Faerae refugee camp in England. Life in Glass Forest is hard, poisoned by disease and crime and poverty. But Samm has a unique gift that lines his pockets – he can find lost things.
When Samm is thrust into the centre of a plot to escape Glass Forest and return home, he must use his gifts to unearth two treasures lost in the everyday: a relic that will end the war back in Faerae; and the only person with the power to reopen the door between worlds – the Locksmith. The task will take Samm to dark places filled with danger, from a grimly enchanted circus of nightmares to a museum housing a murderous exhibit, and he will have to use all of his skills to stay alive.
Meanwhile, in the human world, a kidnapped boy with a dark secret begins to realise that he might hold the key to the Faerae folks’ fate. Before all is said and done, destiny’s web will entangle him with Samm and send them spinning towards a showdown with the great evil that lurks in the world beyond the door.
Amritsar, India, 1919. A city on the brink of violence, as tensions between the local people and the British colonial rulers explode.
12-year-old Arjan Singh learns that his father has been falsely charged with serious crimes. But there has been a terrible massacre in the city, as British troops fired on unarmed Indians, and the city is under curfew. Anger and fear have left the population seething and danger lurks around every corner.
Arjan sets out on a perilous mission to save his father, in the face of armed troops, martial curfew, and vicious local bandits. Can he escape and get to his father before it's too late?
