Frances Hardinge

Winner of the Costa Book of the Year 2015. The Lie Tree is a wonderfully evocative and atmospheric novel by Frances Hardinge, award-winning author of Cuckoo Song and Fly By Night.Faith's father has been found dead under mysterious circumstances, and as she is searching through his belongings for clues she discovers a strange tree. The tree only grows healthy and bears fruit if you whisper a lie to it. The fruit of the tree, when eaten, will deliver a hidden truth to the person who consumes it. The bigger the lie, the more people who believe it, the bigger the truth that is uncovered. The girl realizes that she is good at lying and that the tree might hold the key to her father's murder, so she begins to spread untruths far and wide across her small island community. But as her tales spiral out of control, she discovers that where lies seduce, truths shatter . . .

The Lie Tree

A Skinful of Shadows is a dark YA historical fantasy set in the early part of the English Civil War. Kate is an illegitimate daughter of the aristocratic Fellmotte family, and as such, she shares their unique hereditary gift: the capacity to be possessed by ghosts. Reluctant to accept her appointed destiny as vessel for a coterie of her ancestors, she escapes. As she flees the pursuing Fellmottes across war-torn England, she accumulates a motley crew of her own allies, including outcasts, misfits, criminals, and one extremely angry dead bear. From Costa Book of the Year winner Frances Hardinge comes a new dark historical fantasy that's sure to satisfy her leagues of fans who are eager for more.

A Skinful of Shadows

When Triss wakes up after an accident, she knows that something is wrong. She is insatiably hungry; she keeps waking up with leaves in her hair, and her sister seems terrified of her. When it all gets too much and she starts to cry, her tears are like cobwebs...

Cuckoo Song

"Originally published in hardcover by Macmillan Publishers Limited, United Kingdom, in 2019"--Copyright page.

Deeplight

In the underground city of Caverna, the world's most skilled craftsmen toil in the darkness to create delicacies beyond compare--wines that remove memories, cheeses that make you hallucinate, and perfumes that convince you to trust the wearer, even as they slit your throat. On the surface, the people of Caverna seem ordinary, except for one thing: their faces are as blank as untouched snow. Expressions must be learned, and only the famous Facesmiths can teach a person to express (or fake) joy, despair, or fear--at a steep price. Into this dark and distrustful world comes Neverfell, a girl with no memory of her past and a face so terrifying to those around her that she must wear a mask at all times. Neverfell's expressions are as varied and dynamic as those of the most skilled Facesmiths, except hers are entirely genuine. And that makes her very dangerous indeed . . .

A Face Like Glass

Adventurous orphan Mosca Mye, her savage goose, Saracen, and their sometimes-loyal companion, Eponymous Clent, become embroiled in the intrigues of Toll, a town that changes entirely as day turns to night.

Fly Trap

The Unraveller

On Gullstruck Island the volcanoes quarrel, beetles sing danger and occasionally a Lost is born . . . In the village of the Hollow Beasts live two sisters. Arilou is a Lost – a child with the power to depart her body and mind-fly with the winds – and Hathin is her helper. Together they hide a dangerous secret. Until sinister events threaten to uncover it. With a blue-skinned hunter on their trail and a dreadlocked warrior beside them, they must escape. Can the fate of two children decide the future of Gullstruck Island? Discover a dazzling world, a breathtaking heroine . . . and an incredible adventure. For on the island of Gullstruck nothing is exactly as it seems! With a cast of larger-than-life characters, this is a richly imagined adventure no child will be able to put down – or ever forget!

Gullstruck Island

On an island of sandy beaches, dense jungles, and slumbering volcanoes, colonists seek to apply archaic laws to a new land, bounty hunters stalk the living for the ashes of their funerary pyres, and a smiling tribe is despised by all as traitorous murderers. It is here, in the midst of ancient tensions and new calamity, that two sisters are caught in a deadly web of deceits. Arilou is proclaimed a beautiful prophetess—one of the island's precious oracles: a Lost. Hathin, her junior, is her nearly invisible attendant. But neither Arilou nor Hathin is exactly what she seems, and they live a lie that is carefully constructed and jealously guarded. When the sisters are unknowingly drawn into a sinister, island-wide conspiracy, quiet, unobtrusive Hathin must journey beyond all she has ever known of her world—and of herself—in a desperate attempt to save them both. As the stakes mount and falsehoods unravel, she discovers that the only thing more dangerous than the secret she hides is the truth she must uncover.

The Lost Conspiracy

Three friends fall prey to the demands of the Well Witch when they trespass in her wishing well and steal some coins.

Well Witched

Unraveller

Garth Nix

K.J. Parker

A cabinet of magic! A cavalcade of wonder! A collection of stories both strange and wondrous, of tales filled with wild adventure and strange imaginings. Fearsome Magics, the second New Solaris Book of Fantasy, is all these things and more. It is, we think, one of the best books you will read all year. Award-winning editor Jonathan Strahan has invited some of the best and most exciting writers working in fantasy today to let their imaginations run wild and to deliver stories that will thrill and awe, delight and amuse. And above all, stories that are filled with fearsome magic! Authors include Garth Nix, K.J. Parker, Justina Robson, Ellen Klages, Christopher Rowe, Isobelle Carmody, Tony Ballantyne, James Bradley, Karin Tidbeck, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Frances Hardinger, Kaaron Warren, Genevieve Valentine and Robert Shearman.

Fearsome Magics

Three children find themselves drastically changing after they fish some coins out of a well to pay for their bus fare home. Little did they know that when they took the coins, they also took on the responsibility for granting the wishes that went with them.

Verdigris Deep

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, and as past deeds catch up with them and old enemies appear, it looks as if this time there's no way out. Suggested level: primary, intermediate, junior secondary.

Twilight Robbery

La voix des ombres

Everybody knew that books were dangerous. Read the wrong book, it was said, and the words crawled around your brain on black legs and drove you mad, wicked mad. Mosca Mye was born at a time sacred to Goodman Palpitattle, He Who Keeps Flies out of Jams and Butterchurns, which is why her father insisted on naming her after the housefly. He also insisted on teaching her to read even in a world where books are dangerous, regulated things. Eight years later, Quillam Mye died, leaving behind an orphaned daughter with an inauspicious name and an all-consuming hunger for words. Trapped for years in the care of her cruel Uncle Westerly and Aunt Briony, Mosca leaps at the opportunity for escape, though it comes in the form of sneaky swindler Eponymous Clent. As she travels the land with Clent and her pet goose, Saracen, Mosca begins to discover complicated truths about the world she inhabits and the power of words. "

Fly by Night

Alexandra Ernst

Die Herrin der Worte

El árbol de las mentiras

La voce delle ombre

Fin da quando era piccola Faith ha imparato a nascondere dietro le buone maniere la sua intelligenza acuta e ardente: nell'Inghilterra vittoriana questo è ciò che devono fare le brave signorine. Figlia del reverendo Sunderly, esperto studioso di fossili, Faith deve fingere di non essere attratta dai misteri della scienza, di non avere fame di conoscenza, di non sognare la libertà. Tutto cambia dopo la morte del padre: frugando tra oggetti e documenti misteriosi, Faith scopre l'esistenza di un albero incredibile, che si nutre di bugie per dar vita a frutti magici capaci di rivelare segreti. È proprio grazie al potere oscuro di questo albero che Faith fa esplodere il coraggio e la rabbia covati per anni, alla ricerca della verità e del suo posto nel mondo. Era quella Faith, la fanciulla brava e buona? La ragazza nello specchio era capace di qualunque cosa. Ed era tutto fuorché brava e buona, lo si capiva al primo sguardo. "Non sono buona." Qualcosa nella mente di Faith riuscì a liberarsi, a volare via sbattendo ali nere nel cielo. "Una persona buona non sarebbe mai capace di provare quello che provo io. Sono cattiva e subdola e piena di rabbia. Non c'è salvezza per me."

Frances Hardinge

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