Darcy Burdock

When life with Jayni's violent-tempered father becomes too frightening to cope with, Jayni, her mum and her little brother Kenny are forced to escape in the middle of the night. Slipping out of the house unseen, travelling up to London by train and checking into a hotel – it's almost like playing an elaborate game. They even make up false identities to protect their secret, and Jayni becomes the glamorous-sounding Lola Rose.

Bullied at school for her dyslexia and troubled by her mother’s unexplained disappearance, Kara seeks sanctuary sailing the ocean’s waves in her father’s boat. Meanwhile, Felix resents his well-meaning parents for dragging him to live by the coast and misses his old friends back in London. On their first encounter, Kara and Felix take an immediate dislike to each other. But then they discover a dolphin calf stranded on the beach.

Rosalind and Robbie don't want to spend the summer stuck in their dad's new house with irritating Smash and her glamorous mum. Dad's biggest wish is for everyone to get along. So when he suggests a picnic in nearby Oxshott woods, the children grudgingly agree. That afternoon, in a golden sandpit, Rosalind makes a wish of her own and something extraordinary happens.

Ten-year-old Tracy was taken into care a while ago, and now she lives in a Children's Home. She doesn't know exactly where her mum lives, but she used to have long, pretend phone calls with her. Tracy's had two foster families, but things just didn't work. She allows us to share her hopes for the future in this touching and often very funny tale.

Em adores her funny, glamorous dad – who cares if he's not her real father? He's wonderful to her, and to her little brother Maxie and sister Vita. True to form at Christmas, Dad gives them fantastic presents, including a real emerald ring for his little Princess Em.Unfortunately he's got another surprise in store – he's leaving them. Will Dad's well-meaning but chaotic attempts to keep seeing Em and the other children help the family come to terms with this new crisis?

When Callum and his friends find Lona on Callum's farm then try to chase her back into the village. But Lona runs from them up into the hills. It is late and dark and snow lies in the mountain gullies. Worried for Lona's safety, Callum follows to find her shivering with cold but refusing to leave. She is guarding a secret hidden in the forest above the dark waters of the loch.

London, 1876. Hetty Feather is just a tiny baby when her mother leaves her at the Foundling Hospital. The Hospital cares for abandoned children - but Hetty must live with a foster family until she is big enough to go to school. Life in the countryside is hard but she has 'brothers' Jem and Gideon to play with, and together they sneak off to visit the travelling circus. Hetty is mesmerised by the show, especially Madame Adeline and her performing horses.

Lily isn't home alone – but she sort of wishes she was; looking after her three younger siblings is a lot of responsibility. When Mum goes off on holiday with her new boyfriend and her stepdad fails to show up, Lily is determined to keep the family together and show they can cope without any grown-ups. But taking care of six-year-old twins, her three-year-old sister and the family's flat feels overwhelming and Lily is worried that school or social services might discover their situation and break up the family.

After Saffron Casson discovers that she's adopted, life is never quite the same again. Her artistic parents and doting siblings adore her, but Saffy wants a piece of her past. So when her grandfather bequests a stone angel to her, Saffy knows she has to find it. Realising that her childhood in Siena holds the key, she secretly stows away on a car trip to Italy, with her new friend, Sarah. Meanwhile, the rest of her family are engaged in their own wacky projects.

When Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong set up their very own secret detective agency at Deepdean School for Girls, they struggle to find any truly exciting mysteries to investigate. (Unless you count the case of Lavinia's missing tie. Which they don't.) Then Hazel discovers the Science Mistress, Miss Bell, lying dead in the gym. She assumes it was a terrible accident - but when she and Daisy return five minutes later, the body has disappeared.

Meet Violet Remy-Robinson, an amateur Sherlock Holmes in the making.... When a new family move in next door, Violet is sure there's something strange about them. Then her eccentric but lovely neighbour Dee Dee Derota has a precious jewel stolen. Could the new family be to blame? Violet is on the case to uncover the truth....

The story is about a little girl named Property Jones, so called because she was left in the lost property cupboard of an old bookshop when she was five years old. Property loves living in the bookshop, but she has a secret...she can't actually read! So Property doesn't see the newspaper article announcing the chance to win The Montgomery Book Emporium, a magical place filled with books and a very bad-tempered cat. But all is not as it seems, and soon Property finds herself in a heap of trouble.

Fred awoke to find that a snake was watching him and that there was an aeroplane in the trees. It was on fire. Being on fire was a quality it shared with much of the surrounding jungle. After crashing hundreds of miles from civilisation in the Amazon rainforest, Fred, Con, Lila and Max are utterly alone and in grave danger. They have no food, no water and no chance of being rescued. But they are alive, and they have hope. As they negotiate the wild jungle, they begin to find signs that something - someone - has been there before them.

Sunset lives a life of luxury with her beautiful ex-model mum, her world-famous ex-rocker dad, and two little celeb siblings. But life on the red carpet is no compensation for rowing parents, constant nagging, intensive media scrutiny, and no real friends. Destiny, on the other hand, is an only child living on a rundown estate with a sickly but devoted mum who constantly tells her she's really the daughter of a famous former rock star...

Award-winning, best-selling and beloved Jacqueline Wilson tells the fascinating, moving story of a girl sent away from home as an evacuee during the Second World War. September, 1939. As the Second World War begins, 10-year-old Shirley is sent away on a train with her schoolmates. She doesn't know where she's going, or what's going to happen to her when she gets there. All she has been told is that she's going on 'a little holiday'.