Showing results by narrator "Huw Parmenter" in All Categories

When Seb is offered a place on a radical retreat designed to solve the national crisis of teenage unhappiness, he is determined to change how people see him and make his parents proud. But as he finds himself drawn to the enigmatic Finn, Seb starts to question the true nature of the challenges they must undergo. The deeper into the programme the boys get, the more disturbing the assessments become, until it’s clear there may be no escape.

Frank is 10. He likes cottage pie and football and cracking codes. Max is five. He eats only Quavers ,and some colours are too bright for him, and if he has to wear a new T-shirt he melts down down down. Sometimes Frank wishes Mum could still do huge paintings of stars and asteroids like she used to, but since Max was born she just doesn’t have time. When tragedy hits Frank and Max’s lives like a comet, can Frank piece together a universe in which he and Max aren’t light-years apart?

Barry can’t wait to tell his friends that they’ve been invited on his family caravan holiday to Plonkton. But the weekend by the sea doesn’t turn out to be the keelfest Barry was hoping for. It’s all his best mate Bunky’s fault for going and falling in love. Oh. My. Unkeelness!

Exploring the dichotomy between one's inner and outer self is central to Behind Her Eyes. When a vulnerable woman is drawn into the lives of an enigmatic couple, she finds it hard to differentiate between reality and what truly lies beneath a seemingly perfect exterior. 

You know when someone's horrible to you in a dream and you wake up really annoyed with them? That’s what happened to me with my best friend Bunky. Barry has a new problem: Gordon Smugly—who’s got the most perfect name for himself ever in the history of having a name, because he looks like a Gordon and is smug and ugly—has stolen Barry’s best friend. Join Barry as he attempts to get Bunky back, organises a girly-scream voice test and tries to avoid seeing his teacher kissing his gran.

Two remarkable tales featuring Cymbeline Igoo from the bestselling and Carnegie shortlisted author Adam Baron. BOY UNDERWATER Cymbeline Igloo (yes, really!) has NEVER been swimming. Not ever. Not once. But how hard can it be? He’s Googled front crawl and he’s found his dad’s old pair of...

Barry’s mum has become a bit of celebrity, and now he can’t go anywhere without seeing a poster of her eating a chocolate digestive or wiggling her bum in a pair of jeans. It’s so annoy-embarrassing, and everyone at school is making fun of him. But you can’t keep Barry down for long.... With the help of his napkin collection, new girl Nancy Verkenwerken and a snail called Snailypoos, Barry is determined to prove once and for all that he is not a loser.

‘Angela’s Ashes on four legs’ Evening Standard A furry festive miracle who’s there for you with a helping paw. Percy definitely isn’t just for Christmas… Percy is homeless, abandoned by his owner at an animal rescue centre on a cold winter’s night. So when he finds a loving new...

Here’s something you won’t believe: someone is doing TERRIBLE things to Mrs Martin, Cymbeline Igloo’s favourite teacher of all time. Cymbeline has to find the culprit (after he’s learned what ‘culprit’ means). He’s also got to help his friend Veronique, whose grandma is dangerously ill. It seems Nanai has a secret, connected to her arrival in the UK as a Boat Person from Vietnam, a traumatic journey in which she lost her twin sister.

D. H. Lawrence is no longer censored, but he is still on trial - and we are still unsure what the verdict should be, or even how to describe him. History has remembered him, and not always flatteringly, as a nostalgic modernist, a sexually liberator, a misogynist, a critic of genius and a sceptic who told us not to look in his novels for 'the old stable ego’, yet pioneered the genre we now celebrate as auto-fiction. But where is the real Lawrence in all of this, and how - 100 years after the publication of Women in Love - can we hear his voice above the noise?

Cymbeline Igloo is bored. Bored of home learning, bored of lockdown, bored of not being able to do anything. And to make things even worse, his mum accidentally gave away his favourite football shirt. But then Mrs Stebbings, the beloved school cook, is taken into hospital, and suddenly coronavirus seems much closer to home. When Cym starts a project all about Mrs Stebbings’ childhood in World War II, he can’t know that it’s the beginning of something incredible and even dangerous.

Louise is a single mom, a secretary, stuck in a modern-day rut. On a rare night out, she meets a man in a bar, and sparks fly. Though he leaves after they kiss, she's thrilled she finally connected with someone. When Louise arrives at work on Monday, she meets her new boss, David. The man from the bar. The very married man from the bar...who says the kiss was a terrible mistake but who still can't keep his eyes off Louise. And then Louise bumps into Adele, who’s new to town and in need of a friend. But she also just happens to be married to David.

One stolen baby. Two desperate strangers. One night of terror. The USA Today and Sunday Times top ten bestselling author returns with a dark and twisty psychological thriller. She saved your life. When Nina almost dies during a disastrous blind date, her life is saved by a waitress called Angel...

At 16, Sam Macmillan is supposed to be thinking about girls, homework and his upcoming application to music college, not picking up the pieces after the school shooting that his brother Charlie committed. Yet as Sam desperately tries to hang on to the memories he has of his brother, the media storm surrounding their family threatens to destroy everything. And Sam has to question all he thought he knew about life, death, right and wrong.

A bold new dystopian thriller about an experimental mental health retreat center for young adults where everything is not what it seems—and one boy who will risk everything to escape. Seb has been selected for a new experimental mental health center called HappyHead, designed to solve the...

A heart-pounding love story that grips like a riptide and doesn't let go.... Fifteen-year-old Sam has moved from the big city to the coast - stuck there with his mum and sister on the edge of nowhere. Then he meets beautiful but damaged surfer girl Jade. Soon he's in love with her and with surfing itself. But Jade is driven by an obsession: finding and riding a legendary huge wave no one has ever ridden.

Following hot on the paws from the bestselling A Pug Like Percy, the nation’s favourite pug is back! And this time, Percy has puppies… Percy the pug has found a loving home with Gail, Simon and their daughter Jenny. But now it’s time for Percy’s new puppies to fly the dog bed, and become...

A story about a little dog with the heart of a lion. From the bestselling author of a ‘A Dog Called Homeless’. Leo dreams about being a hero. In his imagination he is a fearsome gladiator, but he wants to be a hero in real life. When the boys at school dare Leo to do something he knows is...

When Gemma meets Aaron, she feels truly seen for the first time. Their love story is the intense kind. The written-in-the-stars, excluding-all-others kind. The kind you write songs about. But little by little their relationship takes over Gemma's life. What happens when being seen becomes being watched, and care becomes control? Told in both Gemma's and Aaron's words, this is a raw, moving exploration of gaslighting in teenage relationships that skewers our ideas of what love looks like.

The experiment continues in the dark and disturbingly thrilling conclusion to the HappyHead duology where Seb will find the secret to escaping is more heart-wrenching than he ever imagined. Seb was sure surviving the experimental health center of HappyHead would be enough to send him home. But...