Hot Key Books

Can this shocking new feeling be love, or is it electrickery? In a lowly side-show fair in eighteenth-century England, teenager Mim is struggling to find her worth as an act. Not white, but not black enough to be truly exotic, her pet parrot who speaks four languages is a bigger draw than her. But Alex, the one-armed boxer boy, sees her differently. And she, too, feels newly interested in him. But then Dr...

An extraordinary tale about the search for love from the acclaimed Costa and Carnegie winning novelist Sally Gardner. Jazmin has been shunned ever since her best friend Becky disappeared. But Becky didn't just disappear - she jumped off a tall building and seemingly never reached the ground. It was as if she simply vanished into thin air. Did Jazmin have something to do with her disappearance? Or was it ...

A bittersweet, funny, sad story of friendship, first love, and heartache, all rolled into one spellbinding tale, from a stunning debut novelist. For fans of John Green, Rainbow Rowell and E. Lockhart. Henry Page, a hopeless romantic and film buff, is smitten as soon as Grace Town walks into his classroom. But Grace - who looks in need of a good bath, is dressed in guy's clothing, and walks with a cane - i...

How can you hate someone in the present and love them in the past? Fliss's mum needs peace and quiet to recuperate from a long illness, so they both move to the countryside to live with Margot, Fliss's stern and bullying grandmother. Life on the farm is tough and life at school is even tougher, so when Fliss unearths Margot's wartime diary, she sees an opportunity to get her own back. But Fliss soon disco...

Rose, Ella, Marta and Carla. In another life we might all have been friends together. But this was Birchwood. For fans of The Diary of Anne Frank and The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. As fourteen-year-old Ella begins her first day at work she steps into a world of silks, seams, scissors, pins, hems and trimmings. She is a dressmaker, but this is no ordinary sewing workshop. Hers are no ordinary clients....

Helplessly drawn like moths to the light, two girls go missing in an evocative and gripping tale ...They called them the Moth Girls because they were attracted to the house. They were drawn to it. Or at least that is what is written in the newspapers that Mandy reads on the anniversary of when her two best friends went missing. Five years have passed since Petra and Tina were determined to explore the di...

Larkin Mills: The Birthplace of Death! Larkin Mills is no ordinary town. It's a place of contradictions and enigma, of secrets and mysteries. A place with an exquisite ice cream parlour, and an awful lot of death. An extraordinary mystery in Larkin Mills is beginning to take shape. First we meet the apparently healthy Albert Dance, although he's always been called a sickly child, and he's been booked into L...

A thrilling read, for fans of Gone Girl and We Were Liars. There was no sign of a struggle, they whisper to each other. She took her phone but left her laptop behind. Apparently, she'd met someone online, they write to each other in class, phones buzzing. She ran away. She was taken. The first time Aiden Kendrick hears about Lizzie Summersall's disappearance is when the police appear at his front door. He...

A twisting, turning thriller from the author of With Malice Two girls, one fatal reading . . . because the truth always lies in the cards Skye's mother believes she has 'the gift' - the opportunity to see the future. Skye however can only see the opportunity to make money - and happily fleeces her gullible classmates into handing over their cash to hear their futures through Skye's wellworn tarot card...

36 questions guaranteed to make two strangers fall head over heels in love with each other? What's not to like. A clever, wry, funny, rom-com. For fans of The Rosie Project.

From the author of the unforgettable bestseller WE WERE LIARS comes a masterful new psychological suspense novel-the story of a young woman whose diabolical smarts are her ticket into a charmed life.

A coming-of-age tale reimagined as a searing Western epic. In the small town of Sand, populated by gunslingers and surrounded by endless desert, Imma washes dishes and grieves for a life she never had. She and her brother, Nikko, dreamed of escaping to become bullet catchers, a legendary band of outlaws who can deflect bullets with their hands. But they were wiped out years ago, Nikko with them. And leavin...

Twelve hours, two boys, one girl ...and a whole lot of hairspray. Seventeen-year-old Sunny's always been a little bit of a pushover. But when she's sent a picture of her boyfriend kissing another girl, she knows she's got to act. What follows is a mad, twelve-hour dash around London - starting at 8pm in Crystal Palace (so far away from civilisation you can't even get the Tube there) then sweeping through Ca...

Magic gloop, evil baddies and a ridiculous amount of food abound in this super-silly story Milk lives in the grubby seaside town of Slopp-on-Sea - a rubbish name for a rubbish town. But Milk's life is pretty rubbish too, so it fits. She loves her Granddad, but nowadays he's always wandering off somewhere, or asking her befuddled questions. Then one day, he comes back from one of his jaunts with a battered b...

It was the kind of August day that hinted at monsoons, and the year was 1774, though not for very much longer. Sixteen-year-old Nix Song is a time-traveller. She, her father and their crew of time refugees travel the world aboard The Temptation, a glorious pirate ship stuffed with treasures both typical and mythical. Old maps allow Nix and her father to navigate not just to distant lands, but distant times ...

A hilarious tale of female friendship, bookshops and fighting for a cause - perfect for fans of Holly Bourne and Louise Rennison. Bennett's Bookshop has always been a haven for sixteen-year-old Paige Turner. It's a place where she can escape from her sleepy hometown, hang out with her best friend, Holly, and also earn some money. But, like so many bookshops, Bennett's has become a 'casualty of the high st...