:
1.
The Fault In Our Stars – John Green
2.
Boys Don’t Cry – Malorie Blackman
3.
Zom-B – Darren Shan
4.
Maximum Security – Robert Muchamore
5.
The Recruit – Robert Muchamore
6.
Falling Fast – Sophie McKenzie
7.
Divergent – Veronica Roth
8.
Tom Gates – Liz Pichon
9.
Before I Die – Jenny Downham
10.
Billionaire Boy – David Walliams
Middle School Book Clubs starting in September – If any Year 8 (Year 9 in September) students would like to join in with this please let us know
British Library Trip
Year 8 and 9 book club had a fantastic time at the British Library in June We started off the day with a treasure hunt searching for the hidden treasures of the library and then after a lunch in the beautiful gardens we took part in a creative writing workshop. The students created poems influenced from words they had used to describe objects around the museum. I asked the students the best bits about the day and here they are:
‘Sitting on History’, 1995 Bronze by Bill Woodrow (they are sitting on a bronze book!)
The King’s Library
The books have been announced. We will start reading in book club in September 'Kate Rickman seems just like any other nineteen-year-old girl. She goes to university, she dates nice, normal boys and she works in her local tourist office at the weekend. But Kate's not really normal at all. 'Kate' is in fact a carefully constructed facade for a girl called Jennifer Jones - and it's a facade that's crumbling fast. Jennifer has spent the last nine years frantically trying to escape from her horrifying past. Increasingly desperate, Jennifer decides to do something drastic. She contacts the only other girl who might understand what she's dealing with, breaking every rule of her parole along the way. Lucy Bussell is the last person Jennifer expects any sympathy from, but she's also the last person she has left. Finding Jennifer Jones is the powerful sequel to the highly acclaimed, Carnegie Medal nominated Looking for JJ. It is a tense, emotional thriller about guilt, running away and wondering if you can ever truly know yourself. 'For the past five weeks I'd prayed that I'd never see my brother's name spelt out in poppies. In the weeks that followed I often wished I had.' Jammy and Sonny McGann are brothers, but that's where the similarities end. One is calm when the other is angry; one has a plan while the other lives purely in the moment. When Jammy returns from Afghanistan a very different man to the one who left, it's Sonny who is left to hold things together. But just how far will he go to save the brother who always put him first?
It's a once-in-a-lifetime thing: a girl on a yacht with her super-rich banker father; a chance for the family to heal after a turbulent time; the peaceful sea, the warm sun . . . But a nightmare is about to explode as a group of Somali pirates seizes the boat and its human cargo - and the family becomes a commodity in a highly sophisticated transaction. Hostage One is Dad - the most valuable. Amy is Hostage Three. As she builds a strange bond with one of her captors, it becomes brutally clear that the price of a life and its value are very different things . . .
Bound together by the devastating consequences of a terrorist attack on a London market, teenagers Charlotte (Charlie) and Nat appear at first to have much in common. But, as Charlie gets closer to Nat and his family, she begins to wonder if perhaps he knows more about the attack than he has let on. Split Second is an action-packed thriller that shifts between the perspectives of its two main characters as their courage and their loyalties are tested to the limit.
Eleven-year-old Olivia has been in care since she was five, and is just beginning her sixteenth placement. Her new home is a secluded farmhouse, centuries old, where she slowly bonds with her foster family. But the house holds dark secrets. Olivia discovers that it was once a notorious baby farm, where unwanted children were left to die. She becomes convinced that the place is haunted. She is desperate to save her new family from the ghosts. The danger is real - but does it come from the twisted mind of a very disturbed child? A powerful and thrilling story from one of today's most exciting young writers.
Would you like to join in? Just let us know in the LRC
Achievement in Accelerated Reader 2013-2014
Special Achievement Awards for this school year go to:
Year 8 Matthew Polley Benjamin Caiels Anastasia Clark Lily Coleman Billy Hilton Elle Lavender Andre Martins Max Older Cody Saunders-Doyle Rhea Maidment Michael Scott
Year 9 Billy Branch Georgij Zaharov Harry Bickers Brandon Broad Wan Tin Li Harry Miles Ethan Miller Ryan Mitchell Dwaine Pease Ryan Steel
Congratulations to the following students for achieving the highest points scored from Reading Practice quizzes in June. Please collect your prizes
Caitlin Buller Matthew Clegg Michael Scott Lucy Brunning Luke Smith Alison Burcombe Hannah Jones Millie Allen Jason Redman James Fullard
167.6 119.1 105.3 94.8 90.7 83.5 78.0 64.0 60.6 56.8
Word Count Awards Bronze: 500,000 Words Read Silver: 2,000,000 Words Read Gold: 5,000,000 Words Read
Read the Book and see the Movie
Mrs Langley’s
Book of the Month
Tella's brother is dying. He's got cancer, and Tella is helpless to save him. Or so she thought. When an invitation arrives for Tella to compete in the Brimstone Bleed, a deadly competition that will lead her through treacherous jungle and scorching desert, she doesn't think twice. Because the prize is a cure to any illness. But Tella will be facing more than just the elements.
Roberta 'Bobbie' Rowe is not the kind of person who believes in ghosts. A Halloween dare at her ridiculously spooky boarding school is no big deal, especially when her best friend Naya and cute local boy Caine agree to join in too. They are ordered to summon the legendary ghost of 'Bloody Mary': say her name five times in front of a candlelit mirror, and she shall appear...But, surprise surprise, nothing happens. Or does it? Next morning, Bobbie finds a message on her bathroom mirror...five days...but what does it mean? And who left it there? Things get increasingly weird and more terrifying for Bobbie and Naya, until it becomes all too clear that Bloody Mary was indeed called from the afterlife that night, and she is definitely not a friendly ghost. Bobbie, Naya and Caine are now in a race against time before their five days are up and Mary comes for them, as she has come for countless others before...This is a truly spine-chilling yet witty horror from shortlisted 'Queen of Teen' author James Dawson Eeny Meeny is the rocket-paced serial-killer thriller debut from M. J. Arlidge. The girl emerged from the woods, barely alive. Her story was beyond belief. But it was true. Every dreadful word of it. Days later, another desperate escapee is found - and a pattern is emerging. Pairs of victims are being abducted, imprisoned then faced with a terrible choice: kill or be killed. Would you rather lose your life or lose your mind? Detective Inspector Helen Grace has faced down her own demons on her rise to the top. As she leads the investigation to hunt down this unseen monster, she learns that it may be the survivors - living calling cards - who hold the key to the case. And unless she succeeds, more innocents will die . . . Staff Library
Cornwall, 1920, early spring. A young man stands on a headland, looking out to sea. He is back from the war, homeless and without family. Behind him lie the mud, barbed-wire entanglements and terror of the trenches. Behind him is also the most intense relationship of his life. Daniel has survived, but the horror and passion of the past seem more real than the quiet fields around him. He is about to step into the unknown. But will he ever be able to escape the terrible, unforeseen consequences of a lie? Staff Library
What happens when the teenage daughter from a family with extreme tastes in meateating starts dating an outspoken vegetarian? Sasha is smitten by Jack, and wishes her parents would approve. For Titus and Angelica, it's one more challenge in creating a stable home for their brood. While angelic baby Katya is set to cut her teeth, their son struggles at school. Ivan does his best to be accepted, but that's tough when he's been secretly raised to become the ultimate hunter gatherer. Welcome to the world of THE SAVAGES - a breed apart from your average household, here's a darkly delicious treat for anyone who’s ever been embarrassed by their own flesh and blood.
Vegan, veggie, carnivore... humanitarian? Welcome to the top of the food chain. The Savages are back - this time in a country where servings come supersized. Titus, Angelica and the kids go to great lengths to fit into their new lives in sunny Florida. But that's not easy when their appetite runs to feasts of human flesh. In this dark comic serving of everyday family life with contemporary cannibals, the Savages seek to hide in plain sight by setting up a vegan cafĂŠ. But when the venture turns out to be a surprise sensation, and bad apples bob to the surface, Titus is forced to question whether the family have finally bitten off more than they can chew.
Life can change in an instant. A cold February morning . . . a snowy road . . . and suddenly all of Mia's choices are gone. Except one. As alone as she'll ever be, Mia must make the most difficult choice of all. Gripping, heartrending and ultimately life-affirming, If I Stay will make you appreciate all that you have, all that you've lost - and all that might be.
Liam O'Connor should have died at sea in 1912. Maddy Carter should have died on a plane in 2010. Sal Vikram should have died in a fire in 2029. Yet moments before death, someone mysteriously appeared and said, 'Take my hand . . .' A time wave has struck that alters the entire history of the American Civil War. Abraham Lincoln has followed Liam into the present from 1831 - and now the world is in a dangerous state of limbo . . . If the TimeRiders can't return Lincoln to the past, the Civil War will never end. Can Maddy persuade two colonels on either side of no man's land to cease fire long enough to save the future? Project Exodus - a mission to transport 300 Americans from 2070 to 54AD to overthrow the Roman Empire - has gone catastrophically wrong. Half have arrived seventeen years earlier, during the reign of Caligula. Liam goes to investigate, but when Maddy and Sal attempt to flee a kill-squad sent to hunt down their field office, all of the TimeRiders become trapped in the Roman past. Armed with knowledge of the future, Caligula is now more powerful than ever. But with the office unmanned - and under threat - how will the TimeRiders make it back to 2001 and put history right? A gripping psychological thriller about the deadly secrets your children can keep … Sue Jackson has the perfect family but when her teenage daughter Charlotte deliberately steps in front of a bus and ends up in a coma she is forced to face a very dark reality. Retracing her daughter’s steps she finds a horrifying entry in Charlotte’s diary and is forced to head deep into Charlotte’s private world. In her hunt for evidence, Sue begins to mistrust everyone close to her daughter and she’s forced to look further, into the depths of her own past. Sue will do anything to protect her daughter. But what if she is the reason that Charlotte is in danger? Staff Library
Darkness has descended on the Shadowhunter world. Chaos and destruction overwhelm the Nephilim as Clary, Jace, Simon, and their friends band together to fight the greatest evil they have ever faced: Clary's own brother. Nothing in this world can defeat Sebastian but if they journey to the realm of demons, they just might have a chance. Lives will be lost, love sacrificed, and the whole world will change. Who will survive the explosive sixth and final instalment of the Mortal Instruments series?
Something sinister is afoot in the house in the west of Ireland in which Sherlock is staying. There are frightened whisperings among the servants and the house's owners are clearly scared. But who - or what? - has terrified them so much that nobody will speak out? Young Sherlock must bring all his powers of deduction to unravelling his greatest mystery yet. Another fast-paced, brilliantly plotted adventure as teenage Sherlock investigates a new crime and comes up against a fresh crop of sinister, clever criminals.
Tella's brother is dying. He's got cancer, and Tella is helpless to save him. Or so she thought. When an invitation arrives for Tella to compete in the Brimstone Bleed, a deadly competition that will lead her through treacherous jungle and scorching desert, she doesn't think twice. Because the prize is a cure to any illness. But Tella will be facing more than just the elements.
An unidentified corpse is recovered from a Lewis peat bog; the only clue to its identity being a DNA sibling match to a local farmer. But this islander, Tormod Macdonald - now an elderly man suffering from dementia - has always claimed to be an only child. When Tormod's family approach Fin Macleod for help, Fin feels duty-bound to solve the mystery. Staff Library
In the village of Martindale, hundreds of miles north of the new English capital of Windsor, sixteen-year-old Silver Blackthorn takes the Reckoning. This coming-of-age test not only decides her place in society - Elite, Member, Inter or Trog - but also determines that Silver is to become an Offering for King Victor. But these are uncertain times and no-one really knows what happens to the teenagers who disappear into Windsor Castle. Is being an Offering the privilege everyone assumes it to be, or do the walls of the castle have something to hide? Trapped in a maze of ancient corridors, Silver finds herself in a warped world of suspicion where it is difficult to know who to trust and who to fear. The one thing Silver does know is that she must find a way out . . .
In the crisp, early morning hours, the police are called to a suspected murder at a farm outside a small English village. A beautiful young woman has been found dead, blood all over the cottage she lives in. At the same time, police respond to a reported female suicide, where a car has fallen into a local quarry. As DCI Louisa Smith and her team gather the evidence, they discover a link between these two women, a link which has sealed their dreadful fate one cold night, under a silent moon. Told in a unique way, using source documents that allow readers to interpret the evidence alongside DCI Louisa Smith and her team, Under a Silent Moon is an unsettling and compulsively readable novel that will keep you gripped until the very last page. Staff Library From the author of the highly acclaimed American Rust comes his eagerly awaited second novel, an extraordinary multi-generational Texan epic Part epic of Texas, part classic coming-of-age story, part unflinching portrait of the bloody price of power, The Son is an utterly transporting novel that maps the legacy of violence in the American West through the lives of the McCulloughs, an ambitious family as resilient and dangerous as the land they claim. Love, honour, children are sacrificed in the name of ambition, as the family becomes one of the richest powers in Texas, a dynasty of unsurpassed wealth and privilege. Yet, like all empires, the McCulloughs must eventually face the consequences of their choices. Staff Library In the bitter cold of an unrelenting winter Tomas and his son, Peter, arrive in Chust and despite the inhospitability of the villagers settle there as woodcutters. Tomas digs a channel of fast-flowing waters around their hut so they have their own little island kingdom. Peter doesn't understand why his father has done this, nor why his father carries a long battered box everywhere they go, and why he is forbidden to know its contents. But 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, intoxicated by their love of life and drawn into their deadly quest. For these travellers are Vampire Slayers and Chust is a dying community - where the dead come back to wreak revenge on the living. Amidst the terrifying events that follow, Peter is stunned to see his father change from a disillusioned man to the warrior hero he once was. Marcus draws on his extensive research of the vampire legend and sets his story in the forbidding and remote landscapes of the 17th century. Written in his usual distinctive voice, this is also the story of a father and his son, of loss, redemption and resolution.
LRC Staff Book Club Commencing Monday 14th July As delightfully wry and witty as his bestselling debut, ‘The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared’, this is a tale of how one woman’s attempt to change her future ended up changing everything. Nombeko Mayeki is on the run from the world’s most ruthless secret service – with three Chinese sisters, twins who are officially one person and an elderly potato farmer. Oh, and the fate of the King of Sweden – and the world – rests on her shoulders. Born in a Soweto shack in 1961, Nombeko was destined for a short, hard life. When she was run over by a drunken engineer her luck changed. Alive, but blamed for the accident, she was made to work for the engineer – who happened to be in charge of a project vital to South Africa’s security. Nombeko was good at cleaning, but brilliant at understanding numbers. The drunk engineer wasn’t – and made a big mistake. And now only Nombeko knows about it … As uproariously funny as Jonas Jonasson’s bestselling debut, this is an entrancing tale of luck, love and international relations Northern Iceland, 1829. A woman condemned to death for murdering her lover. A family forced to take her in. A priest tasked with absolving her. But all is not as it seems, and time is running out: winter is coming, and with it the execution date Only she can know the truth. This is Agnes's story. A whirlwind romance. A perfect marriage. Hannah Reilly has seized her chance at happiness. Until the day her husband fails to come home . . . And can you ever really know what happened before you met?
After years of watching her best friends Ben and Claire try for a baby, Romily offered to give them the one thing they most wanted. But Romily wasn't prepared for the overwhelming feelings that have taken hold of her and which threaten to ruin her friendship with Ben and Claire - and even destroy their marriage. Now there are three friends, two mothers and only one baby, and an impossible decision to make . . . Can you commit the perfect crime? Pilgrim is the codename for a man who doesn't exist. The adopted son of a wealthy American family, he once headed up a secret espionage unit for US intelligence. Before he disappeared into anonymous retirement, he wrote the definitive book on forensic criminal investigation. But that book will come back to haunt him. It will help NYPD detective Ben Bradley track him down. And it will take him to a rundown New York hotel room where the body of a woman is found face down in a bath of acid, her features erased, her teeth missing, her fingerprints gone. It is a textbook murder - and Pilgrim wrote the book. What begins as an unusual and challenging investigation will become a terrifying race-against-time to save America from oblivion. Pilgrim will have to make a journey from a public beheading in Mecca to a deserted ruin on the Turkish coast via a Nazi death camp in Alsace and the barren wilderness of the Hindu Kush in search of the faceless man who would commit an appalling act of mass murder in the name of his God. Celebrity news reporter and presenter, Tully Hart, has hit rock bottom. Kate Ryan had been her best friend for more than thirty years. They’d lived, laughed, danced and cried together. Kate had been her anchor, and now Tully was cast adrift – not knowing how she was going to survive. Kate’s daughter, Marah, was only sixteen years old when her mother died. Consumed with guilt over the fights they’d had during the last months of Kate’s life, Marah runs away and becomes a drop-out in society, maintaining no contact with her family. Tully’s mother, Cloud, a child of the Sixties, has lived a world of her own dependent on drugs for most of her adult life. She now wants to prove that she can help her daughter. But what will it take for Tully to forgive? And then something momentous happens which causes each one of them to realise what they’ve done, and what they have become. FLY AWAY is the story of three women who have lost their way and need each other – plus a miracle – to transform their lives.
Be Careful What You Wish For opens with Harry Clifton and his wife Emma rushing to hospital to learn the fate of their son Sebastian, who has been involved in a fatal car accident. But who died, Sebastian or his best friend Bruno? When Ross Buchanan is forced to resign as chairman of the Barrington Shipping Company, Emma Clifton wants to replace him. But Don Pedro Martinez intends to install his puppet, the devious Major Alex Fisher, in order to destroy the Barrington family firm just as the company plans to build its new luxury liner, the MV Buckingham. Back in London, Harry and Emma's adopted daughter wins a scholarship to the Slade Academy of Art where she falls in love with a fellow student, Clive Bingham, who asks her to marry him. Both families are delighted until Priscilla Bingham, Jessica's future mother-in-law, has a visit from an old friend, Lady Virginia Fenwick, who drops her particular brand of poison into the wedding chalice. Then, without warning, Cedric Hardcastle, a bluff Yorkshireman who no one has come across before, takes his place on the board of Barringtons. This causes an upheaval that none of them could have anticipated, and will change the lives of every member of the Clifton and Barrington families. Hardcastle's first decision is who to support to become the next chairman of the board: Emma Clifton or Major Alex Fisher? And with that decision, the story takes yet another twist that will keep you on the edge of your seat. Leaving home is one thing. Surviving is another. 1940s Lahore, the Punjab. Two brothers and their two younger sisters are brought up to be 'good children', who do what they're told. Beaten and browbeaten by their manipulative mother, to study, honour and obey. Sully, damaged and brilliant, Jakie, irreverent and passionate. Cynical Mae and softhearted Lana, outshone and too easily dismissed. The boys escape their repressive home to study medicine abroad, abandoning their sisters to their mother and marriages. Sully falls in love with an unsuitable Indian girl in the States; Jakie with an unsuitable white man in London. Their sisters in Pakistan refuse to remain trophy wives, and disgrace the family while they strike out to build their own lives. As they raise their own families, and return to bury the dead, Sully and Jakie, Mae and Lana, face the consequences of their decisions, and learn that leaving home doesn't mean it will ever leave them. THE GOOD CHILDREN is a compelling story of discipline and disobedience, punishment and the pursuit of passion, following the children of a gamechanging generation and the ties that bind them across cultures, continents and decades. Painful and sweet, tough and surprising, it is a landmark epic of the South Asian immigrant experience
When an elderly man is stabbed to death in an elevator and a crewman on an Italian fishing trawler is machine-gunned by a Tunisian patrol boat off Sicily’s coast, only Inspector Montalbano suspects a link between the two incidents. His investigation leads to the beautiful Karima, an impoverished house cleaner and sometime prostitute, whose young son steals other school children’s midmorning snacks. But Karima disappears, and the young snack thief’s life – as well as Montalbano’s – is endangered when the inspector exposes a viper’s nest of government corruption and international intrigue. Berlin 1920 Two babies are born. Two brothers. United and indivisible, sharing everything. Twins in all but blood. As Germany marches into its Nazi Armageddon, the ties of family, friendship and love are tested to the very limits of endurance. And the brothers are faced with an unimaginable choice....Which one of them will survive?
Bill is a dedicated young lawyer working in New York. He leaves everything he trained for to follow his dream to become a minister in rural Wyoming. Jenny, his fashion stylist wife, leaves the milieu and life she loves to join him. The certainty they share is that their destinies are linked forever. Fast forward thirty-eight years. Robert is a hard-working independent book publisher in Manhattan, looking for one big hit novel to publish. Lillibet is a young Amish woman, living as though in the seventeenth century, caring for her widowed father and three young brothers on their family farm. In secret at night, by candlelight, she has written the novel that burns within her. When it falls into Robert's hands, he falls in love first with the book, and then with the woman he has never met. THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HOME. OR IS THERE? After an 'incident' one wet Friday night where Professor Andrew Martin is found walking naked through the streets of Cambridge, he is not feeling quite himself. Food sickens him. Clothes confound him. Even his loving wife and teenage son are repulsive to him. He feels lost amongst a crazy alien species and hates everyone on the planet. Everyone, that is, except Newton, and he's a dog. What could possibly make someone change their mind about the human race. . .?
This Book Club will end in December