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A historical middle-grade novel following a plucky thirteen-year-old hired girl in rural 1919 Nova Scotia, exploring grief and love, poverty and privilege, and family in all its forms, from the award-winning author of The Cammie Turple series. Lark Harnish, plucky and chatty and full of hope, is starting a new life. It's 1919 in rural Nova Scotia and at just thirteen years old, she has to leave her mother and siblings to go work at the McMasters house. Her father has died and her family despera...

A peasant changes places with a prince and both youths learn something about "pleasures and palaces."

In Canada early in the twentieth century, Ben, the youngest in a family of Jewish immigrants struggling to make ends meet, decides to help out but when a hat maker gives him a chance, disaster strikes and Ben nearly loses hope.

Now a high school sophomore, Joseph Flood contends with grief over his late cousin Jasmine, his mother's addictions and pleas for money, the distance between himself and his father in Iraq, making the tennis team, and a new relationship.

Annie’s family work hard to survive on their Ohio farm. Annie’s happiest when hunting game with her pa, and she doesn’t care one bit that it’s not the kind of thing girls are meant to do. When tragedy strikes, the family is thrown into deepest poverty. Until one day, Annie dares to pick up Pa’s old rifle, and find a way to feed her starving family. As the family’s fortunes worsen, Annie is sent away to work, and life becomes an ever greater struggle. Yet Annie has the courage and pluck to surv...

"Rosy-cheeked and quite antique, Miss Pinkeltink / carried everything but the kitchen sink. / Her purse was so big that it dragged on the floor. / When she rode on the bus it got stuck in the door." Generous and eccentric, Miss Pinkeltink fills her huge purse with everything from a toilet plunger to roller skates, and then gives it all away. She offers tape to fix a flat tire and a bone to a kitty: Miss Pinkeltink’s gifts never quite hit the mark, / but she gave what she had, and she gave from t...

2 The clock mounted on the face of the organ loft made a muted click as it measured off another minute. Charles glanced up at it – 4:30. It would soon be safe to leave for home. The inside of the old church was dim. The only light came through the stained glass windows that ran along both sides of the nave. For the first few minutes after you walked in, it felt as if you’d come into a cave walled in colored glass. But as your eyes adjusted to the lower light, the space took shape around you. T...

Nominated for the Carnegie Medal. Longlisted for the Branford Boase Award. Aidan needs his bike to deliver all the mail his postman dad’s been hoarding since his mum was sectioned. But his bike’s just been stolen. In the early morning, Aidan chases after the thieves, hellbent on getting it back. When he reaches the abandoned factory where they’ve stashed his bike, he has moments to grab it and escape. But he finds more than just stolen goods. There’s a mysterious prisoner chained to the floor....

Twelve-year-old Rox and her grandmother Mimi sell at a flea market every weekend to supplement the family's only income, that of construction worker and college student, cousin John Martin.