Here at last are the longlisted titles for the Grampian Children’s Book Award 2013!  Pupils from across the region are voting for their favourites and the shortlist will be announced in early November.  All the titles are available in the Library so come on, get reading!

Becker, Tom    TheTraitors

Adam has betrayed his best friend. His punishment is 274 years in the Dial, a prison in a no-time world, where teenage traitors are forced to atone for their crime. Legend has it that only one person has ever escaped. Nobody knows if he made it back to the real world, but he left behind a ray of hope. Soon Adam is caught up in his own deadly plan to escape. But who can he trust in a world full of traitors…?

 Campbell, Victoria    Viking Gold

Sixteen-year old Redknee never knew his father. Now his uncle is Jarl and wants Redknee to be a great Viking warrior. But Redknee is clumsy, and more interested in tracking the wild deer of the forest. When the young Viking stumbles upon a war-party making for his home, he must grow up quickly; the brutal Ragnar burns the village, taking for spoils only a mysterious book. But why would Ragnar kill so many for a mere book? Will its talk of faraway lands lead Redknee astray or does the book hold the key to his past…and his future?

  Castor, H M    V111

Think you know Henry V111? Think again. Hal is a boy of extraordinary talent, astonishing warrior skills and a fierce sense of honour and virtue. He believes he is destined for greatness. But haunted by the ghosts of his family’s violent past he embarks on a journey that will lead him to absolute power and bring him face to face with his demons. 

  Cousins, Dave    15 Days Without a Head

Fifteen-year-old Laurence Roach just wants a normal life, but it’s not easy when your mum is a depressed alcoholic, and your six-year-old brother thinks he’s a dog. When Mum fails to come home one night, Laurence tells nobody, terrified he and his brother will be taken into care if anyone finds out. Instead, he attempts to keep up the pretence that Mum is still around: dressing up in her clothes to trick the neighbours and spinning an increasingly complicated tangle of lies.

 Hutchison, Barry    The 13^th Horseman

Drake is surprised to find three Horsemen of the Apocalypse playing snakes and ladders in his garden shed. Even more surprisingly they’re missing a Horseman and think Drake is the boy for the job. Drake is reluctant to join them, but does being in charge of Armageddon have to spell the end of the world?

Lewis, Gill    Sky Hawk

Something lives deep within the forest…something that has not been seen on Callum’s farm for over a hundred years. Callum and Iona make a promise to keep their amazing discovery secret, but can they keep it safe from harm? The pact they make will change lives forever

 Lowery, Mark    Socks Are Not enough

Mike Swarbrick’s life couldn’t get any worse. His best friend gets him embroiled in a scandal involving the girls’ changing rooms, his idiot of an older brother is snogging the girl of his dreams and he’s just come home early from school to discover his parents are secret nudists . . . but they’re ready to go public! A chain of events beyond his control are set to RUIN HIS LIFE. 

MacPhail, Cathy    Out of the Depths

Tyler Lawless has an unusual and sometimes scary gift. She is able to see dead people. When Tyler moves to a new school she is hoping to make a fresh start. But that isn’t easy when a boy who is supposed to be dead appears in your classroom, and statues in the school seem to come alive and point towards the place where the dead boy, Ben Kincaid, was murdered. Will Tyler be able to assist Ben with his pleas for help, or will she be dismissed as an attention-seeking teller of tall tales?

 McKenzie, Sophie    Falling Fast

This is life, not a rehearsal…When River auditions for a part in an inter-school performance of Romeo and Juliet, she finds herself smitten by Flynn, the boy playing Romeo. River believes in romantic love, and she can’t wait to experience it. But Flynn comes from a damaged family – is he even capable of giving River what she wants? The path of true love never did run smooth…

 Ness, Patrick    A Monster Calls

The monster showed up just after midnight. As they do. But it isn’t the monster Conor’s been expecting. He’s been expecting the one from his nightmare, the one he’s had nearly every night since his mother started her treatments, the one with the darkness and the wind and the screaming… The monster in his back garden, though, this monster is something different. Something ancient, something wild. And it wants the most dangerous thing of all from Conor. It wants the truth.

 Nicholls, Sally    All Fall Down

It’s 1349 and the biggest catastrophe in historical memory – the Black Death – is about to hit fourteen-year-old Isabel’s village. There is nowhere to run from a disease that has killed half of Europe. Isabel will need all of her courage if she is to survive and cope with a world that has been changed forever.

 Pitcher, Annabel    My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece

Ten-year-old Jamie Matthews has just moved to the Lake District with his Dad and his teenage sister, Jasmine for a ‘Fresh New Start’. Five years ago his sister’s twin, Rose, was blown up by a terrorist bomb. Everyone kept saying it would get better with time but its worse than ever: Dad drinks, Mum’s gone and Jamie’s left with questions that he must answer for himself as he tries to make sense of the loss that tore his family apart.

 Smith, Alexander Gordon   The Fury

Cal, Brick and Daisy are three ordinary teenagers with one terrifying thing in common: today without warning the world will turn against them. Every person they meet will become a bloodthirsty, mindless savage, hell-bent on killing them.  They do not know why but must discover the truth before it destroys them all.

 Wein, Elizabeth    Code Name Verity

Only in wartime could an ordinary lass from Manchester rub shoulders with a Scottish aristocrat. They become firm friends, one a pilot, the other a Special Operations Executive. But then a vital mission goes wrong, and “Verity” is captured by the Gestapo and becomes a prisoner of war. Truth or lies? Honour or betrayal? Everything they’ve ever believed in is put to the test…