Young Adult: Blood Storm by Rhiannon Hart

In Blood Storm (Random House Australia) Princess Zeraphina and Rodden, the King's right-hand man, are both “harmings,” a kind of vampire who isn’t actually undead, but does need blood; it doesn’t have to be human and they make the most of small creatures such as rabbits and squirrels. But now beggars and other unlikely-to-be missed folk have been found drained of blood in the streets. Sailors and

Children’s Books: In the Beech Forest by Gary Crew, illustrated by Den Scheer

In the Beech Forest (Ford Street) is not the kind of picture book you read to your five-year-old. It’s aimed at an older age group, around ten upwards. If you can bring yourself to part with the book, you can give it to your older child.
The storyline is simple: a boy leaves behind his computer games for a walk in the beech forest.
“A beech forest,” his father told him. “Antarctic beech: ancient,

Young Adult: Sea Hearts by Margo Lanagan

If, like me, you’ve grown up on Celtic folk tales, you’ll be familiar with the story of the human male who gets himself an otherworldly bride. With a few exceptions, it’s really only in modern YA paranormals that it’s the other way around.Basically, there are two kinds: There’s the one where she’s the daughter of a king of the otherworld, whether it’s the sea or Faerie; and there’s the one where

Children’s Books: The Outcasts by John Flanagan

The Outcasts, which is book one of the Brotherband Chronicles, is a spinoff from John Flanagan’s Ranger’s Apprentice series, through which I’m currently making my delighted way.I admit I had only read the first book in that series, The Ruins Of Gorlan, when I read this, and saw some resemblance to that book, although it’s set in another country, Skandia, the Norse analogue, rather than Araluen,

Young Adult: Angel Arias: The Night Creatures Book 2 by Marianne De Pierres

In Burn Bright, Retra, a girl from the Puritan-like Seal community in Grave, followed her runaway brother to the island of Ixion. On Ixion, where teenagers party throughout the night (there is no day) she discovered some terrifying truths about what happened to those teens once they got too old for Ixion. But Retra, now named Naif, was a lot stronger than she had thought. She has fought for her

Young Adult: The Witch Hunter Chronicles: Army Of The Undead by Stewart Daly

The year is 1666. The hero: Jakob, a teenage member of the Hexenjager, a German military witch and demon hunter organization. Jakob has been a member for only about a month when, one night in a cemetery, investigating something fishy involving exhumed bodies, he learns something the Witch Hunters weren’t expecting. Something a lot nastier than a bunch of warlocks or minor demons. Try