This ​Rough Magic

Paulo Coelho - Veronika ​Decides to Die
Veronika ​has everything she could wish for - young and pretty, with plenty of attractive boyfriends, a steady job, loving family. Yet Veronika is not happy and one winter's morning takes an overdose of sleeping pills, only to wake up some time later in the local hospital. There she is told that although she is alive, her heart is now irreparably damaged and she has only a few days to live… This story follows her through these intense days as she starts question all her ideas about life. Soon she comes to realise that every second of existence is a choice we all make between living and dying. This is a moving and uplifting song to life, one that reminds us that every moment in our lives is special and precious.

Charlaine Harris - Grave ​Surprise
Charlaine ​Harris is already a star and a New York Times bestseller with her vampire mysteries starring Sookie Stackhouse and her Lily Bard mysteries. This second installment to her new supernatural mystery series might just be her biggest hit yet. Grave Sight's Harper Connelly is back, and her ability to find the dead and see their last moments is in higher demand than ever... A college class gets more than it bargained for when Harper gives a demonstration of her uncanny talent. Instead of just finding one body in an old grave, she finds two: the original occupant and a recently deceased girl whom Harper had tried, and failed, to find two years previously. To dispel suspicions about her own innocence, Harper and her stepbrother Tolliver undertake their own hunt to find the killer-only to find yet another body in the same grave.

Shannon Hale - Book ​of a Thousand Days
When ​Dashti, a maid, and Lady Saren, her mistress, are shut in a tower for seven years for Saren’s refusal to marry a man she despises, the two prepare for a very long and dark imprisonment. As food runs low and the days go from broiling hot to freezing cold, it is all Dashti can do to keep them fed and comfortable. But the arrival outside the tower of Saren’s two suitors—one welcome, and the other decidedly less so—brings both hope and great danger, and Dashti must make the desperate choices of a girl whose life is worth more than she knows. With Shannon Hale’s lyrical language, this forgotten but classic fairy tale from the Brothers Grimm is reimagined and reset on the central Asian steppes; it is a completely unique retelling filled with adventure and romance, drama and disguise.

Shannon Hale - Forest ​Born
Rin, ​Razo's little sister, is haunted by the forest she has always loved. When Razo invites her back to the city to be one of Queen Ani's waiting women, she happily accepts...only to end up on the adventure of her lifetime, following the queen, Enna, and Dasha into the countryside in search of a fire-starting enemy that no one can see. As she learns more about the three women's magical talents, she finds her own strength comes from places both expected the forest and unexpected the sound of her own voice. A brilliant addition to the "Books of Bayern', this book is a treat for fans of this series, and stands alone for readers who might be discovering the joys of Shannon Hale's writing for the first time.

Shannon Hale - Princess ​Academy
Miri ​lives on a mountain where, for generations, her ancestors have quarried stone and lived a simple life. Then word comes that the king's priests have divined her small village the home of the future princess. In a year's time, the prince himself will come and choose his bride from among the girls of the village. The king's ministers set up an academy on the mountain, and every teenage girl must attend and learn how to become a princess. Miri soon finds herself confronted with a harsh academy mistress, bitter competition among the girls, and her own conflicting desires to be chosen and win the heart of her childhood best friend. But when bandits seek out the academy to kidnap the future princess, Miri must rally the girls together and use a power unique to the mountain dwellers to save herself and her classmates.

Elle Cosimano - Nearly ​Gone
Bones ​meets Fringe in a big, dark, scary, brilliantly-plotted urban thriller that will leave you guessing until the very end. Nearly Boswell knows how to keep secrets. Living in a DC trailer park, she knows better than to share anything that would make her a target with her classmates. Like her mother's job as an exotic dancer, her obsession with the personal ads, and especially the emotions she can taste when she brushes against someone's skin. But when a serial killer goes on a killing spree and starts attacking students, leaving cryptic ads in the newspaper that only Nearly can decipher, she confides in the one person she shouldn't trust: the new guy at school - a reformed bad boy working undercover for the police, doing surveillance... on her. Nearly might be the one person who can put all the clues together, and if she doesn't figure it all out soon - she'll be next.

Leslye Walton - The ​Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender
Magical ​realism, lyrical prose, and the pain and passion of human love haunt this hypnotic generational saga. Foolish love appears to be the Roux family birthright, an ominous forecast for its most recent progeny, Ava Lavender. Ava — in all other ways a normal girl — is born with the wings of a bird. In a quest to understand her peculiar disposition and a growing desire to fit in with her peers, sixteen-year old Ava ventures into the wider world, ill-prepared for what she might discover and naive to the twisted motives of others. Others like the pious Nathaniel Sorrows, who mistakes Ava for an angel and whose obsession with her grows until the night of the summer solstice celebration. That night, the skies open up, rain and feathers fill the air, and Ava’s quest and her family’s saga build to a devastating crescendo. First-time author Leslye Walton has constructed a layered and unforgettable mythology of what it means to be born with hearts that are tragically, exquisitely human.

Karen Healey - When ​We Wake
My ​name is Tegan Oglietti, and on the last day of my first lifetime, I was so, so happy. Sixteen-year-old Tegan is just like every other girl living in 2027 - she's happiest when playing the guitar, she's falling in love for the first time, and she's joining her friends to protest the wrongs of the world: environmental collapse, social discrimination, and political injustice. But on what should have been the best day of Tegan's life, she dies - and wakes up a hundred years in the future, locked in a government facility with no idea what happened. Tegan is the first government guinea pig to be cryonically frozen and successfully revived, which makes her an instant celebrity - even though all she wants to do is try to rebuild some semblance of a normal life. But the future isn't all she hoped it would be, and when appalling secrets come to light, Tegan must make a choice: Does she keep her head down and survive, or fight for a better future? Award-winning author Karen Healey has created a haunting, cautionary tale of an inspiring protagonist living in a not-so-distant future that could easily be our own.

Deanna Raybourn - A ​Spear of Summer Grass
Paris, ​1923 The daughter of a scandalous mother, Delilah Drummond is already notorious, even amongst Paris society. But her latest scandal is big enough to make even her oft-married mother blanch. Delilah is exiled to Kenya and her favorite stepfather's savannah manor house until gossip subsides. Fairlight is the crumbling, sun-bleached skeleton of a faded African dream, a world where dissolute expats are bolstered by gin and jazz records, cigarettes and safaris. As mistress of this wasted estate, Delilah falls into the decadent pleasures of society. Against the frivolity of her peers, Ryder White stands in sharp contrast. As foreign to Delilah as Africa, Ryder becomes her guide to the complex beauty of this unknown world. Giraffes, buffalo, lions and elephants roam the shores of Lake Wanyama amid swirls of red dust. Here, life is lush and teeming-yet fleeting and often cheap. Amidst the wonders-and dangers-of Africa, Delilah awakes to a land out of all proportion: extremes of heat, darkness, beauty and joy that cut to her very heart. Only when this sacred place is profaned by bloodshed does Delilah discover what is truly worth fighting for-and what she can no longer live without.

C. J. Harper - The ​Disappeared
In ​a future where children are segregated into institutions that range from comfortable "Learning Communities" to prison-like "Local Academies", seventeen-year-old Jackson is an academic high flyer, living in a top Learning Community and destined for a position in the Leadership. But when he is sent with his best friend Wilson to deliver a package to a factory block, the two boys are attacked leaving Jackson badly beaten and Wilson dead. Confused and upset, Jackson returns to his Learning Community only to be dismissed by his teachers who claim not to know him. Sent to an Academy, an institute set up to train factory workers, Jackson finds himself immersed in a world that couldn't be further removed than the comfortable life he's used to; a harsh, violent, semi-articulate society where the students have created their own hierarchy based on fighting ability. Using his wits to survive, Jackson starts to realise that his whole life has been based on half-truths. And in order to survive he needs to expose the lies that surround the Academy and find out the truth about who he really is. As he builds alliances and begins to educate those closest to him, a plan for rebellion and escape gradually comes into shape... Fast-paced, page-turning, moving, yet with a streak of dark humour, The Disappeared is a very British dystopia, with shades of Orwell and Huxley.

Miriam Forster - The ​City of a Thousand Dolls
The ​girl with no past, and no future, may be the only one who can save their lives. Nisha was abandoned at the gates of the City of a Thousand Dolls when she was just a child. Now sixteen, she lives on the grounds of the isolated estate, where orphan girls apprentice as musicians, healers, courtesans, and, if the rumors are true, assassins. Nisha makes her way as Matron’s assistant, her closest companions the mysterious cats that trail her shadow. Only when she begins a forbidden flirtation with the city’s handsome young courier does she let herself imagine a life outside the walls. Until one by one, girls around her start to die. Before she becomes the next victim, Nisha decides to uncover the secrets that surround the girls’ deaths. But by getting involved, Nisha jeopardizes not only her own future in the City of a Thousand Dolls—but her own life.

Sophie McKenzie - Close ​My Eyes
It's ​been eight years since Geniver Loxley lost her daughter, Beth. Since that day, Gen has been floundering. While her husband Art builds his business reputation and their fortune, she can't let go of Beth. And then one day, everything changes. A strange woman shows up on Gen's doorstep, saying the very thing she longs to hear: that Beth is alive. That she is out there somewhere, waiting for Gen to find her . . . It's insane. Unthinkable. But why would someone make up such a story? Ignoring the warnings of her husband and friends, Gen begins to hope - hope that quickly turns into fear and paranoia. With questions swirling around her head, Gen is determined to uncover the truth. But who can she trust? Why is Art so reluctant to get involved? To save his wife from further hurt? Or something much more sinister? Is Beth even really out there? And, if so, who is responsible for taking her? What is the truth about Beth Loxley?

Kerry Schafer - Wakeworld
Vivian ​Maylor is trying to hold it together. But her attempts to build a life with the man she loves seem doomed by the dragon inside her yearning to break free. Vivian is a dreamshifter, the last line of defense between reality and the dreamworld, and the only one of her kind. Weston Jennings also believes he is the only one of his kind. He fears his powers as a dreamshifter, and resists learning to control them. After suffering a tragic loss, Weston heads deep into the woods of the Pacific Northwest to embrace a safe life of solitude. But when a terrible mistake leads to an innocent’s death, his guilt drives him to his former home, where he encounters what he never thought he would find: another shifter. Now Vivian and Weston must work together to defeat a new threat to the dreamworld.

Christopher Reeve - Still ​Me
Christopher ​Reeve has beaten the odds before. He scored his first role in a Euripides play at 15, costarred with Katharine Hepburn at 22, and was one of two advanced-program students accepted at Juilliard, to which 2,000 drama students annually apply. (The other advanced student became his best friend, Robin Williams.) Reeve rode a sailplane to 32,000 feet over Pikes Peak, fell 90 feet from a parasail harness into four feet of water and walked away. He survived emergency appendectomy, malaria in Kenya, and the disastrous film Changing Channels, with Burt Reynolds. He flew vintage airplanes upside down. On his first solo transatlantic flight, a radar controller informed him he was about to run out of gas 200 miles west of Iceland. The radar controller had misread his screen, and Reeve landed safely. Then, in 1995, his horse balked at a 3-foot-3-inch racecourse fence, made an abrupt "dirty stop," Reeve's hands got tangled in the reins, he landed on his head and got a "hangman's injury"--a broken neck. Ace paramedics got oxygen to him 60 seconds before brain damage set in, and a helicopter named Pegasus lofted him to a hospital. Reeve was already important. His interpretation of Superman was classic, and his starring role in The Bostonians launched the Merchant/Ivory school of filmmaking. But it was not until his paralysis that Reeve really got moving as a public figure of the first rank. As his memoir Still Me details, since the accident, Reeve has directed his first film, started the Christopher Reeve Foundation to fund spinal-cord-repair research, lobbied Congress, and crisscrossed the country on speaking engagements. Says Reeve, "Lindbergh made it across the Atlantic [where he was feted by Reeve's grandma]; Houdini got out of those straitjackets; with enough money and grass-roots support, why shouldn't I be able to get out of this wheelchair?" Part Hollywood reminiscence, part scientific detective story, and part soapbox speech, Still Me explains the tantalizing but quite real possiblity that Reeve (and a quarter-million other paralyzed people, plus 49 million disabled Americans) may get back on their feet. Bobby Kennedy once tried to bolster Reeve's faith by saying, "Just fake it till you make it. The prayers will seem phony, but one day they'll become real." Christopher Reeve has more than a prayer, he has a program. He ain't fake, and he just might make it, leading a cast of millions. --Tim Appelo

Yelena Black - Dance ​of Shadows
Vanessa ​knew that dance was in her blood, but she had no idea the world of elite ballet was center stage for the darkest of secrets - until her sister mysteriously disappeared from the world-renowned New York Ballet Academy. Three years later, Vanessa follows in Margaret's footsteps, lands the role most girls at NYBA would kill for... and gets trapped in a sinister spiral of secrets. Back-stabbing bunheads, a fiercely unrelenting choreographer, and the sexy male lead of the troupe - they all want something from Vanessa. And though she revels in the attention, what Vanessa truly craves are answers. Instead, she feels as though she is losing her footing at every turn. Is she doomed to relive her sister's strange fate? Riveting and sexy, Dance of Shadows twists the cutthroat world of ballet with a psychological thriller, in a dance you won't be able to resist.

G. C. Thornley - Gwyneth Roberts - An ​Outline of English Literature
An ​Outline of English Literature provides a complete survey of the English prose, poetry and drama of Great Britain and Ireland from earliest times to the 1980s. It discusses the work of major writers in their historical context, with quotations, examples and illustrations. Key features of this book are: - a critical survey of English literature from Old English to the present day - chapters on the 20th century: completely revised and brought up to date fro this new edition, with extended quotations from major authors - a new glossary of literary terms - a table of historical and literary events - 2000 word vocabulary

Fisher Amelie - Vain
If ​you’re looking for a story about a good, humble girl, who’s been hurt by someone she thought she could trust, only to find out she’s not as vulnerable as she thought she was and discovers an empowering side of herself that falls in love with the guy who helps her find that self, blah, blah, blah...then you’re gonna’ hate my story. Because mine is not the story you read every time you bend back the cover of the latest trend novel. It’s not the “I can do anything, now that I’ve found you/I’m misunderstood but one day you’ll find me irresistible because of it” tale. Why? Because, if I was being honest with you, I’m a complete witch. There’s nothing redeeming about me. I’m a friend using, drug abusing, sex addict from Los Angeles. I’m every girlfriend’s worst nightmare and every boy’s fantasy. I’m Sophie Price...And this is the story about how I went from the world’s most envied girl to the girl no one wanted around and why I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.

Emily Rodda - Dragon's ​Nest
After ​finally destroying the crystal used by the advisors to communicate with the Shadow Lord, Lief discovers a fragment of a map. It is discovered that the recent outbreak of famine and plague in Deltora is a result of beasts called the Four Sisters, who magically poison the land. Only dragons can kill them, and they are believed to be extinct. However, Doran the Dragonlover convinced seven of them, one for each territory, to go into hibernation. The Sisters live at the easternmost, northernmost, westernmost, and southernmost points of Deltora. Setting out for Dragon's Nest, the easternmost point in Deltora, the companions discover a Capricon called Rolf captured by the Granous, riddle-loving monsters. Capricons once lived in a great city called Capra, where the town of Broome now stands, but it was destroyed by dragons after the Capricons angered the dragons by stealing their eggs, among other thing. Rolf claims to be the only one left. The companions meet the now-awakened Topaz Dragon, Fidelis, who they previously encountered in hibernation on their way to the underworld in the previous series. He refuses to accompany them, since Doran made the dragons swear not to enter each other's territory while they hibernated, so as to prevent them from taking advantage of each other's slumber. The companions travel on and reach Broome, where they meet the warrior-women Lindal. She guides them to Dragon's Nest, where they find the Sister of the East. Rolf reveals himself to be the Sister's Guardian, having served the Shadow Lord in exchange for magical power and the promise of one day ruling the East, (he is the heir of Capra, and believes it to be his right) and is killed by the newly awakened Ruby Dragon, Joyeu, who destroys the Sister.

Emily Rodda - The ​Shadowlands
Lief, ​Barda, and Jasmine continue their quest to reunite the three pieces of the Pirran Pipe. They collect the third and final piece of the pipe on the island of Keras. From there, they go into the Shadowlands, the realm of the evil Shadow Lord, and free the Deltoran prisoners using the Pirran Pipe.

Jodi Picoult - Salem ​Falls
When ​Jack St. Bride arrives in the small town of Salem Falls, all he wants is to escape his past. He's spent the last eight months in jail, after being falsely accused of having an affair with an underage student at the school where he taught. In Salem Falls, he gets a job as a dishwasher at a local diner and tentatively begins a romance with the diner's owner, Addie, who is still mourning the death of her young daughter, born after Addie was raped in high school by three drunk boys. As she and Jack fall in love, they both see hope for the future. But their newfound love is threatened when the residents of Salem Falls learn of Jack's conviction and begin harassing him. When, predictably, a teenage girl accuses Jack of raping her, he finds himself back in jail, fighting a serious charge and the town's prejudice. Addie wrestles with her doubts and memories of her own rape, but she believes in Jack and goes on a quest of her own to find out the truth about Jack's initial conviction, even as the Salem Falls trial opens.