Cette année, Miranda Hilliard a besoin de quelqu'un pour s'occuper de ses trois enfants, Lydia, Christopher et Natalie, et de la maison. Pourquoi pas moi ? propose Daniel, son ex-mari, un acteur au chômage. Pas question, réplique Miranda. Elle veut une personne de confiance, quelqu'un de solide, ave...

Rien ne va plus au 27, avenue des Métairies. Estelle est aussi aimable qu'un bouledogue en proie à une rage de dents. La mère rentre chez elle par la fenêtre pour éviter de parler à sa fille. Et le père crie : « Alerte ! » dès que ladite fille pousse la porte de sa chambre...Will a toutes les raison...

Comment écrire dans un magnifique carnet quand on n'a pas la moindre idée de ce qu'on pense ? Je n'étais même pas sûre de ce que je ressentais. Je ne sais pas combien de temps je suis restée là, assise devant la fenêtre. En tout cas, j'avais la main toute moite à force de tenir mon stylo au-dessus d...

Ce n'est pas tous les jours facile d'avoir une mère qui accroche des pendentifs en forme d'araignées à ses oreilles, se teint les cheveux en bleu, se promène en bikini à paillettes et en pantalon bouffant à pois roses, et ne verrait aucun inconvénient à se rendre dans cette tenue à un rendez-vous av...

Guilt is in the eye of the beholder ... When her cold and indifferent husband vanishes, so does Lois's old life. Now she is ready to take her chances again. There's only one fly in the ointment: Janie-Gay, ex-partner of the son Lois lost to drugs, and spiteful mother of the small, neglected child...

'Okay, okay. So stick my head in a holly bush . . .' Tuffy, the Killer Cat, knows what he likes. And he isn't loving the 'art' that Ellie's mum brings home from her new class! So what's a cat to do . . . Mischief and mayhem rule in Anne Fine's brilliant new story, with hilarious illustrations by ...

The King is at his wit's end; twelve daughters and every morning their shoes are torn to ribbons! Nobody can tell him why, so he promises that whoever uncovers their secret will inherit his kingdom. The reward is huge - but the price of failure is their head. Who will risk it all for a dance with th...

Harry is in trouble. He's burned down the family kitchen so now has to spend a week of his summer hols with his uncle Tristram - who's heading off to stay with a new girlfriend - Morning Glory - on a tiny British island. Harry doesn't expect it to be a lot of fun - with just a wacky competiti...

'I adore stories in which people have weird dreams, and strange things happen. But that's in books. Real life is supposed to be real, and I like my world to be solid around me...' Mel is the class bookworm. She prefers books to people and doesn't want - or need - friends. She certainly doesn't want ...

I am NOT going to Charm School...' But Bonny has no choice. Forced to spend a day at Charm School while her mother is on a course, Bonny makes some surprising and hilarious discoveries. Can Bonny cope with listening to Mrs Opalene's Helpful Handy Hits (like 'how to bleach your elbows'!)? And what a...

Told who to cheer for, who to believe in, Yuri grows up in a country where no freedom of thought is encouraged - where even one's neighbours are encouraged to report any dissension to the authorities. But it is still a shock when a few careless words lead him to a virtual death-sentence - sent on a ...

"What does he mean? What's going on? Are you two thinking of putting Granny into a Home?" "Thinking is finished,' Natasha told him. 'It is decided." The four children, Ivan, Sophie, Tanya and Nicholas, can't believe it. Their parents are planning to put their grandmother into a Home. She's a bit of ...

How stupid do you have to be to fall out of a top floor window? Or was Stolly trying something else - up on cloud nine, even then? Stolly has always been so alive, so inspiring, taking risks, hiding nothing, notorious for being the school's most imaginative liar (or fantatist, as he calls it). But...

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Bliss! A lovely, quiet, nothing-to-do and nothing-on-the-calendar Sunday . . . Well, that's until bossy Aunt Susan - an unstoppable force - is on the phone insisting that Harry and his family come down to help her a local event she's promised to organise: the Great Toadpool Show. It me...

Lovers, colleagues, family - Tilly has always been brilliant at pushing people in and out of her life exactly as it suits her. Then along comes Geoffrey, gentle, compassionate, generous to a fault, with his miserable little children and his manipulative ex-wife. Tilly's own expertise in the arts ...

Colin is in many ways an ideal citizen. He holds down a responsible job for the council. He visits his aged mother Nora, shops for her, cooks for her, and listens to her grumbles. He also keeps in touch with his sister Dilys, long estranged from her mother, in a vain attempt to maintain family tie...

'Okay, okay. So slap my teensy little paws. I messed up - big time.' Tuffy can't wait for Ellie and the family to go away on holiday. He and the gang plan to ignore the grumpy new cat-sitter, and run wild all night. But could that furry bundle, suddenly flying through the air, put a stop to all the ...

It was my birthday. How was I supposed to know it wouldn't be the only party around town on that dark and dreary Halloween night? So things ended up in a bit of a mess. (Well, more than a mess, really. A complete disaster.) But it was not my fault so don't blame me . . . Another laugh-out-loud...

So go on, ask me. 'Dear, dear Tuffy. Why was your Christmas so horrible?' Well. I couldn't climb the tree. I couldn't touch the dangly decorations. And Ellie made me part of her sing-along Christmas performance. Horrible, horrible, horrible! But I showed them. I was Tuffy the Acting Cat, sup...

Let it be flour babies. Let chaos reign. When the annual school science fair comes round, Mr Cartwright's class don't get to work on the Soap Factory, the Maggot Farm or the Exploding Custard Tins. To their intense disgust they get the Flour Babies - sweet little six-pound bags of flour that must...

Christmas comes but once a year. Luckily . . . The Christmas holiday is, traditionally, a time when families gather together. In Ralph's case this means ten or more relatives coming to stay, including assorted aunts and uncles, nutty Great-Aunt Ida (the Home tells them to be careful not to let her o...

Tuffy doesn't feel wanted at home any more. His owners just don't appreciate him. So what if he broke the new TV? Got fur on all Dad's clean clothes? Ate Tinkerbell the kitten's special kitten-food? All accidents! But they're making such a fuss! So Tuffy decides to make a break for it. He bid...

Edward is four years old when he is locked away with his mother by her abusive, alcoholic partner, Harris. By the time an elderly neighbour spots his pale face peering through a crack in the boarded-up window and raises the alarm, he is seven. Rescue comes, but lasting damage has been done. ...