An interactive activity title for 9-12-year-olds on the power of kindness You can choose to make the world a better place. The power is within you! Every one of us experiences the world differently - we have different worries and problems, and we all have unique hopes and dreams - but there's one thing that can unite us and make the world a better place, and that's KINDNESS! Kindness is cool! No, really! Kindness can create positive change in all our lives. Whether it's being a friend to someone who seems lonely, or simply smiling or giving somebody a thumbs up. When we support each other, we can be our best selves. Be the Change: Be Kind is your handbook on how to use your own voice to empower yourself and others to spread kindness. Award-winning children's author Marcus Sedgwick tells the story of kindness - where it comes from, what it feels like and perhaps most importantly why it matters - and asks YOU what you would do in different everyday scenarios. ARE YOU READY TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE?

During a long, hot summer, two children, Stephanie and Stephen, go missing while on a school trip to Lud's Church, a deep chasm in the heart of the Peak District. Porter and his friend, Sam, are sent to fetch help. When they return they are surprised to find that although Stephanie has been found, no one is even looking for Stephen anymore. Why can no one remember what's happened him? What happened in the dark of Lud's Church? And why does Porter get the feeling that supernatural forces from deep in the past are at play? Marcus Sedgwick fuses mythology and mystery to create a compelling tale that is perfect for less-confident readers.

An interactive activity book for 9-12-year-olds on overcoming anxiety You can conquer your worries. The power is within you! We all experience anxiety from time to time. It can feel overwhelming and uncomfortable, and stops us from doing the things we enjoy - so what on earth can we do about it? Be the Change: Be Calm will show you how to shut down anxiety with fun and simple ways to calm your mind by listening to what your body is telling you. Ever tried the half-salamander exercise? You should! And have you ever performed a body scan? Thought not. These amazing activities along with many others will become your toolkit to a calmer and happier life. Award-winning author Marcus Sedgwick takes us on a fascinating journey to find out where anxiety comes from, looking at the power of storytelling in terms of training our brain to overcome worries. He also shows us what animals can teach us about dealing with stress AND introduces us to our second brain! Hello! It's time to make CALM your superpower. ARE YOU READY TO BE KIND TO YOUR MIND?

From the multi-award-winning author of Midwinterblood and The Ghosts of Heaven comes a suspenseful, gripping tale about teen life and relationships, exploring our wavering connection to the world around us. WRATH: extreme anger or rage Cassie Cotton has always been unusual, a bit different - but this only makes her more intriguing to her classmate Fitz. Cassie can hear a noise that most people don't notice or recognise, and she believes it's a sound that shows the Earth is in distress, damaged by human activity that is causing climate change. When this belief leads to her being ridiculed and bullied at school, Cassie disappears. Fitz is determined to find her, but he has no idea where to start looking, or if he'll be in time to help her...

A gripping, prizewinning novel about a girl surviving in a devastated world. Imagine that a few years from now England is covered by water, and Norwich is an island. Zoe, left behind in the confusion when her parents escaped, survives there as best she can. Alone and desperate among marauding gangs, she manages to dig a derelict boat out of the mud and gets away to Eels Island. But Eels Island, whose raggle-taggle inhabitants are dominated by the strange boy Dooby, is full of danger too. The belief that she will one day find her parents spurs Zoe on to a dramatic escape in a story of courage and determination that is handled with warmth and humanity. This book was the winner of the Branford Boase Award 2001 and marked the start of author Marcus Sedgwick's multi-award-winning career.

A grim discovery brings disturbing revelations in this chilling ghost story from bestselling author Marcus Sedgwick, set amid a backdrop of family discord and growing social discontent. While mucking about in the ruins of an old farm while on holiday in Yorkshire, James hears strange laughter echoing around the walls. The ghost of a young girl appears to him and urges James to follow her but at first he's too afraid. When she appears again, this time James follows. But will he be able to face the terrible truth she reveals ...?

What would you sacrifice for someone you've loved forever? Winner of the Michael L. Printz Award, MIDWINTERBLOOD is a dark, breathtaking and cleverly crafted paranormal love story like no other, beautifully told in seven parts and spanning ten centuries. Have you ever had the feeling that you've lived another life? Been somewhere that has felt totally familiar even though you've never been there before, or felt that you've known someone even though you are meeting them for the first time? Eric and Merle loved and lost one another, and have been searching for each other through time ever since. This novel comprises seven short stories and travels in time, from 2073 back to the days of Viking sagas. Across the different tales, the two souls appear as lovers, mother and son, brother and sister, and artist and child as they come close to finding each other before facing the ultimate sacrifice . . .

A potent, powerful and timely thriller about migrants, drug lords and gang warfare set on the US/Mexican border by PRINTZ MEDAL winning and CARNEGIE MEDAL, COSTA BOOK AWARD and GUARDIAN CHILDREN'S FICTION PRIZE shortlisted novelist, Marcus Sedgwick. Anapra is one of the poorest neighbourhoods in the Mexican city of Juarez. Twenty metres outside of town lies a fence, and beyond it, America - the dangerous goal of many a migrant. Faustino is one of them, trying desperately to escape from the gang he's been working for. He's dipped into a pile of dollars he was supposed to be hiding, and now he's on the run. He and his friend, Arturo, have only 36 hours to replace the missing money, or they're as good as dead. Watching over them all the while is Saint Death. Santissima Muerte. She of pure bone and charcoal-black eye, she of absolute loyalty and neutral morality, holy patron to rich and poor, to prostitute and narco-lord, criminal and police-chief. A folk saint, a rebel angel, a sinister guardian.

Of all weathers, snow is the one that has always affected Marcus Sedgwick the most. While many people's idea of the perfect holiday involves sun, sea an sand, he instead makes trips to cold, snowy parts of the world: Russia, Scandinavia or the Arctic Circle. A few years ago he bought a mountain home, an old chalet d'alpage high in the Haute Savoie, and for the first time he began to understand what it is to live in an environment where extreme snowfall is frequent.Like the six sides of a snowflake, the book has six chapters, each exploring the art, literature and science of snow, as well as his own experiences and memories, asking whether it really did snow more during his boyhood in Kent and whether changing climate patterns might mean,that for some areas of the world, snow may become a thing of the past. He also wonders why snow is so powerful for our imagination, so transformative and as fundamental as our response to darkness, to sunlight.

An original interpretation of the timelessly fascinating vampire myth, and a story of father and son, by award-winning author Marcus Sedgwick. Winner of the Booktrust Teenage Prize and shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal. In the bitter cold of an unrelenting winter, Tomas and his son, Peter, arrive in Chust. Despite the villagers' lack of hospitality, they settle there as woodcutters. But there are many things Peter does not understand. Why does Tomas dig a channel of fast-flowing waters around their hut so they live on an isolated island? Why does Tomas carry a long battered box everywhere they go - and refuse to tell Peter of its contents? When a band of gypsies comes to the village, Peter's drab existence is turned upside down. He is infatuated by the beautiful gypsy princess, Sofia, and intoxicated by her community's love of life. He even becomes drawn into their deadly quest - for these travellers are Vampire Slayers, and Chust is a community to which the dead return to wreak revenge on the living. Stylishly written and set in the forbidding and remote landscapes of the 17th century, this is a story of a father and his son, of loss, redemption and resolution.

It's summer. Rebecca is an unwilling visitor to Winterfold - taken from the buzz of London and her friends and what she thinks is the start of a promising romance. Ferelith already lives in Winterfold - it's a place that doesn't like to let you go, and she knows it inside out - the beach, the crumbling cliff paths, the village streets, the woods, the deserted churches and ruined graveyards, year by year being swallowed by the sea. Against her better judgement, Rebecca and Ferelith become friends, and during that long, hot, claustrophobic summer they discover more about each other and about Winterfold than either of them really want to, uncovering frightening secrets that would be best left long forgotten. Interwoven with Rebecca and Ferelith's stories is that of the seventeenth century Rector and Dr Barrieux, master of Winterfold Hall, whose bizarre and bloody experiments into the after-life might make angels weep, and the devil crow.

Ash boards a Greyhound bus heading to the place where Bly was last seen: Snowflake, Arizona. Six thousand feet up in the wide red desert, Ash meets Mona, her dog, her goat, and her neighbors, and finds stepbrother Bly, too. In their ramshackle homes, the walls lined with tinfoil, almost all the residents of Snowflake are sick. But this isn't any ordinary sickness: the chemicals and technologies of modern life are poisoning them. They call themselves canaries, living warning signs that humans have pushed the environment too far, except no one seems to be taking their warnings seriously. The healthy "normies" of Snowflake have written them off as a bunch of eccentrics, and when Ash too falls ill, the doctor's response is "It's all in your mind." Snowflake, AZ contemplates illness and health-both our own and our planet's. As Ash lives through a cycle of illness and recovery and loss, the world beyond is succumbing to its own affliction: a breakdown of civilization only distantly perceived by Ash and the isolated residents of Snowflake, from which there may or may not be a chance for recovery. This provocative novel by one of our most admired storytellers explores the resilience of love and community in the face of crisis.

Meet the wonderfully weird Otherhand family and their faithful guardian, Edgar the raven, and discover the dark secrets of Castle Otherhand. Edgar is alarmed when he sees a nasty looking black tail slinking under the castle walls. But his warnings to the inhabitants of the castle go unheeded: Lord Valevine Otherhand is too busy trying to invent the unthinkable and discover the unknowable; his wife, Minty, is too absorbed in her latest obsession - baking; and ten-year-old Cudweed is running riot with his infernal pet monkey. Only Solstice, the black-haired, poetry-writing Otherhand daughter, seems to pay any attention. As the lower storeys of the castle begin mysteriously to flood, and kitchen maids continue to go missing, the family come ever closer to the owner of the black tail... Dedicated website on Raven Mysteries: www.ravenmysteries.co.uk

An eerie, modern gothic thriller about what awaits us after death - angels or the devil . . . A fast-paced, dark, sinister and powerful novel, shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal 2011 and longlisted for the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize 2010. It's summer. Taken from the buzz of London, her friends and what she thinks is the start of a promising romance, Rebecca is an unwilling visitor to Winterfold. Ferelith already lives in Winterfold - it's a place that doesn't like to let you go, and she knows it inside out: the beach, the crumbling cliff paths, the village streets, the woods, the deserted churches and ruined graveyards, year by year being swallowed by the sea. Against their better judgement, Rebecca and Ferelith become friends, and during that long, hot, claustrophobic summer they discover more about each other - and about Winterfold - than either could have wanted. Frightening secrets are uncovered that would have been best long forgotten. Interwoven with Rebecca and Ferelith's stories is that of the seventeenth century Rector and Dr Barrieux, master of Winterfold Hall, whose bizarre and bloody experiments into the after-life might make angels weep, and the devil crow . . .

Eep ... The final adventure awaits! Nothing can stand in the way of Elf Girl and Raven Boy saving the world... Well, almost nothing. Just a sea monster, a dragon, and rivers of molten lava. Not to mention some seriously Creepy Caves. Defeating the Goblin King might be harder than they thought. The sixth laugh-out-loud adventure from BLUE PETER BOOK AWARD-shortlisted Marcus Sedgwick and Pete Williamson.

A dark and gothic novel of vampires and 18th Century Venice, filled with mystery and intrigue. A captivating story of love and loss, THE KISS OF DEATH is a stunning companion volume to the bestselling MY SWORDHAND IS SINGING. Peter's ongoing search for the Shadow Queen leads him to Venice - the fabled city with lapping waterways, crumbling magnificence, dark, twisting alleyways and surprising piazzas. A city whose beauty disguises many ugly secrets. The Shadow Queen is there, gathering strength, recruiting a new army of the Undead for a final confrontation. Marko and Sorrel meet in Venice for the first time. They must uncover the mystery of what has happened both to Sorrel's father, who is plagued by a strange madness that prevents him from sleeping, and to Marko's father, a doctor, who has mysteriously gone missing after travelling to Venice to help his old friend . . .

Sig Andersson has a choice to make - use the gun or die. An unforgettable, razor-sharp psychological thriller set in the snowy wilderness of the Arctic Circle. Recipient of a Michael L. Printz Honor 2011, shortlisted for the CILIP Carnegie Medal 2010 and longlisted for the GUARDIAN Children's Fiction Prize 2010. 1910. A cabin north of the Arctic Circle. Fifteen-year-old Sig Andersson is alone. Alone, except for the corpse of his father, who died earlier that day after falling through a weak spot on the ice-covered lake. His sister, Anna, and step-mother, Nadya, have gone to the local town for help. Then comes a knock at the door. It's a man, the flash of a revolver's butt at his hip, and a mean glare in his eyes. Sig has never seen him before but Wolff claims to have unfinished business with his father. As Sig gradually learns the awful truth about Wolff's connection to his father, his thoughts are drawn to a certain box hidden on a shelf in the storeroom, in which lies his father's prized possession - a revolver. As the stakes rise and Wolff begins to close in, Sig's choice is pulled into sharp focus. Should he use the gun?

Laureth Peak's father has taught her to look for recurring events, patterns, and numbers--a skill at which she's remarkably talented. Her secret: She is blind. But when her father goes missing, Laureth and her seven-year-old brother, Benjamin, are thrust into a mystery that takes them to New York City, where surviving will take all her skill at spotting the amazing, shocking, and sometimes dangerous connections in a world full of darkness. "She Is Not Invisible" is an intricate puzzle of a novel that sheds a light on the delicate ties that bind people to each other.

The Russian Revolution. Fairy tale, spy thriller, love story. One man's life during the last days of the Romanovs, beautifully imagined by award-winning author Marcus Sedgwick. Shortlisted for the Costa Children's Book Award. Set in the rich and atmospheric landscape of Russia during the revolution that sent shockwaves around the world, this is the partly true story of Arthur Ransome - a writer accused of being a spy. Fictionalising history and blending it with one man's real life, Marcus Sedgwick expertly crafts this innovative and stimulating novel of three parts - a fairy tale full of wise and foolish kings, princesses, wishes and magic; a bleak and threatening spy thriller, and a love story . . .

A timely, contemporary novel challenging ideas around health – our own and our planet's – and the stigma that persists around illness, by Printz Medallist and internationally bestselling novelist, Marcus Sedgwick.

Ash has lived in eight states in as many years. Mom has gone walkabout, but stepdad Jack is like a father, and stepbrother Bly the best anyone could wish for. When Bly goes missing too, Ash sets off to search for him – and finds something much bigger: the sickness of the world.

Arriving in Snowflake, Arizona, Ash discovers Bly living with a community 6000 feet high in the wide red desert. They call themselves the Canaries and all suffer from some kind of environmental illness. They are ostracised by modern society, as it continues to ignore climate change, global warming and so much more of our self-inflicted poisoning of the planet. When Ash takes ill, the doctor's response is, 'it's all in your mind'. In a story spanning seven years with triumphs and tragedies, Ash learns how to live as the world is pushed to a point of no return. This humane and deeply thoughtful novel is about resilience, trust, family and love.

Join the wonderfully weird Otherhand family and their faithful guardian, Edgar the raven, and discover the dark secrets of Castle Otherhand. The rumblings and wailings from the Lost South Wing can no longer be ignored, as one by one, members of the castle are being found frozen, 'scared to death'. With mother, Minty, obsessing over her latest fad - sewing - and father, Valevine, busy experimenting with a machine to discover the Lost Otherhand treasure, it's up to aspiring ghost-hunters Solstice and Cudweed to solve the mystery. But as usual, things don't go quite as planned... It's just as well Edgar is there to save the day! Second in a brand new six book series of tales of mystery (with a touch of goth-froth) for 9 year olds from bestselling author, Marcus Sedgwick. With quirky black and white line illustrations from new talent, Pete Williamson. Dedicated website on Raven Mysteries: www.ravenmysteries.co.uk

A potent, powerful and timely thriller about migrants, drug lords and gang warfare set on the US/Mexican border by PRINTZ MEDAL winning and CARNEGIE MEDAL, COSTA BOOK AWARD and GUARDIAN CHILDREN'S FICTION PRIZE shortlisted novelist, Marcus Sedgwick. Anapra is one of the poorest neighbourhoods in the Mexican city of Juarez - twenty metres outside town lies a fence, and beyond it, America - the dangerous goal of many a migrant. Faustino is one such trying to escape from the gang he's been working for. He's dipped into a pile of dollars he was supposed to be hiding and now he's on the run. He and his friend, Arturo, have only 36 hours to replace the missing money, or they're as good as dead. Watching over them is Saint Death. Saint Death (or Santissima Muerte) - she of pure bone and charcoal-black eye, she of absolute loyalty and neutral morality, holy patron to rich and poor, to prostitute and narco-lord, criminal and police-chief. A folk saint, a rebel angel, a sinister guardian.

A dazzling literary mystery from prizewinning author Marcus Sedgwick, for fans of Scarlett Thomas, Carlos Ruiz Zafon and Patrick Suskind. In Paris, in the year 1899, Marcel Despres is arrested for the murder of his wife and transferred to Salpetriere asylum. And so the story might have stopped. But this is no ordinary patient: Marcel Despres, Mister Memory, is a man who cannot forget. And it is no ordinary case: the hurried cover-up hints at dark secrets in the shadows. A policeman and a doctor decide to unravel the mystery...but the answers lie inside Marcel's head. And how can he tell what is significant when he remembers every detail of every moment of his entire life?