The Dark is Rising ~ Susan Cooper

The Dark is Rising series consists of five books:

In the first book, Over Sea, Under Stone, three children, Simon, Jane, and Barnabas Drew, are on holiday in Trewissick, a sleepy Cornwall village. With them are their parents and a the mysterious family friend "Great-Uncle Merry." The Drew children’s discovery of a real treasure map takes them on an exciting, frightening quest to discover a grail that has been hidden for over a thousand years. They are opposed by sinister enemies, but find unexpected help in Great-Uncle Merry, who turns out to be more powerful than they ever knew, an agent of what he calls "the Light." By finding the grail, they win the first battle in a great war that is beginning all over England between the Dark and the Light.

In the second book, The Dark is Rising, another key fighter in this great war is Will Stanton. Will is nearly eleven, and on his birthday he discovers that he is the last-born in the Circle of the Old Ones, servants of the Light. Another Old One, Merriman Lyon, teaches Will the knowledge and skills he needs to win for the Light, the next battle of the great war. Will finds the six Signs, objects of power that the Light will use in the final confrontation to defeat the Dark; he also awakens Hern the Hunter to track the Dark to the ends of the earth.

In the third book, Greenwitch Will and the Drews meet. The grail has been stolen, and Great-Uncle Merry brings Simon, Jane, and Barney back to Trewissick to recover it. They are dismayed to discover, however, that Great-Uncle Merry has brought another boy with him, someone named Will Stanton.

Convinced that Will will get in the way, they attempt to leave him behind as they set out to recover the grail. Will, of course, has come to Trewissick to join his master, Merriman, in helping the Drews with their task. In the end, the Drews realize that Will is perhaps just as powerful as their great uncle. But first Jane witnesses the ritual making of the Trewissick Greenwitch, a powerful but lonely creature who gives Jane an important key to the message of the grail in return for Jane's friendship.

The fourth book is The Grey King. Will goes on a lone quest to Wales to find a golden harp whose music will awaken six Sleepers, warriors of the Light. When he arrives, Will meets a boy named Bran who agrees to help Will with his task. To find the harp, the boys must open the ancient green hills of Wales on the old Day of the Dead, now known as Hallowe'en. They are harried by the Grey King, a Lord of the Dark who has his stronghold on the Welsh mountain Cader Idris. While on the way to awaken the Sleepers, they uncover secrets about Bran's past that link him to Arthur Pendragon, another great Lord of the Light.

In Silver on the Tree, the final book in the cycle, Will, Merriman, and the Drews return to Wales, where together with Bran they begin the final battle with the Dark. Will and Bran journey to the Lost Land, a legendary country that was drowned off the Welsh coast, and take from there a crystal Sword, the last great weapon of the Light. Then the six of them take the Sword and the Signs in a race against the Dark to the Chiltern hills of England, where stands the Midsummer Tree.

Jody Tiffin is the son of frugal Californian ranchers in the 1930s. He trains and nurtures a longed for pony only to see it become sick and die. Jody meets a mysterious old paisano who disappears into the mountains when Jody's father will not let him stay on the ranch. Jody listens to his grandfather's stories and realises that loss is inevitable. This is a story of growing up and how painful that can be.

This is a fairy tale for our times, fairies might grant you your dearest wish, but they might just as easily blast you off the planet with a bio bomb if they don't like what you just did to them. Captain Holly Short of the LEPrecon, an elite branch of the Lower Elements Police, is busy getting on with ordinary fairy business. Having spent her magical energies helping the Retrieval Squad to round up a rampaging troll above ground, where it was interfering with human activities, she sets out to Ireland to carry out the ritual which will rejuvenate her powers. That's where she meets Artemis Fowl. Actually, he kidnaps her. His plan is to hold her to ransom. He's heard all about the Hostage Fund of fairy gold, and he needs to get hold of some gold to help support the dwindling family estates. He isn't a very moral person. That's because he is the latest in a long line of arch-criminals.
There's a message in code at the bottom of each page which is possible to break.

Falsely accused of stealing a pair of trainers, Stanley Yelnats is sentenced to eighteen months of hole digging at the Camp Green Lake juvenile detention centre in Texas. Stanley is not surprised by this miscarriage of justice as his family has often suffered from being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The holes must be five foot deep by five foot wide; the Warden claims this labour is character building but this is a lie and Stanley must dig up the truth.

Thaniel, just seventeen, is a wych-hunter. Together, he and Cathaline - his friend and mentor - track down the fearful creatures that lurk in the Old Quarter of London. It is on one of these hunts that he first encounters Alaizabel Cray. Alaizabel is half-crazed, lovely, and possessed. Whatever dreadful entity has entered Alaizabel's soul has turned her into a strange and unearthly magnet - attracting evil and drawing horrors from the very depths of hell. Cathaline and Thaniel must discover its cause, and thus begins a treacherous quest across London. At stake is all humanity.

This is a story about a young boy who does an angel a good turn and who gets his reward. This is not a normal Angel Gabriel. He's a disgusting crumpled-up heap, vermin-ridden, a tramp, who Michael finds in the far corner of their derelict garage. He eats the spiders that scramble across him and the mice that scuttle round the disintegrating lean-to.
Michael's life is temporarily on 'hold' while his parents, and he, wait to see whether his new baby sister, born with a damaged heart, will live. Michael and his new friend, Mina, care for the shrivelled creature, Skellig, who thrives as he licks out the left-overs from Chinese take-away trays. In return for the care and concern which Michael has shown towards Skellig, Skellig helps the desperate family.
Is Skellig an angel? He undoubtedly has the form of an angel. As he thrives under the care of Michael and Mina his wings unfold and his face becomes young and beautiful.

This is the first of the trilogy The Edge Chronicles. A fantasy world of strange creatures and perilous adventures is encountered by Twig as he sets out from the Woodtroll's village where he was abandoned as a child. Each chapter introduces a new, fantastic creature and often new dangers for Twig to survive.

It is a town eat town world and Tom has been brought up to believe that municipal Darwinism is a beautiful and noble system. Now, it may be a vast, sophisticated city, but London is cobbled together from bits of scrap metal and Old-Tech. Some of the scavenged Old-Tech goes straight to the Guild of Historians to be preserved, and some goes to the powerful Guild of Engineers. Sometimes the Engineers can work out how to recreate the old technology from their bits and pieces, and sometimes they can't. This story is about what happens when Valentine the Explorer brings back to London a malignant piece of Old-Tech, known as Medusa. The thing is, if London really proposes to recreate an ancient weapon of mass destruction, then mass destruction is going to be one of the inevitable consequences. So Valentine finds he has quite a few enemies. For a start, there is the grossly disfigured Hester Shaw, whose parents he killed in his quest to obtain possession of Medusa. And there is Tom, Third Class Apprentice of the Guild of Historians. He just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Valentine pushes him down the waste chute after Hester Shaw because he fears he knows too much about Hester Shaw. But neither Tom nor Hester Shaw are killed by their fall down the waste chute. They land in the soft mud of the Out-Country, and so begins an uneasy alliance, which gradually firms up into friendship, and even something more.

The book begins in the Blood Room where Xanthe tends to the soldiers brought into the walls after a battle. It is there that she meets Alastor and the god Eros who shoots Xanthe with his arrow causing her to love Alastor. (The Gods and Goddesses drift in and out of the story meddling in the affairs of the characters seemingly out of boredom, but humans immediately forget any contact with the deities after they disappear.) Xanthe works in Hector and Andromache's home, and her sister Marpessa works for Helen and Paris. Marpessa can see the Gods and Goddesses and remember what she sees. Rumours have begun to travel through Troy that Alastor, a young man of means, has taken on a secret lover and that his mother arranged a marriage to prevent a union below his station. When the Greek soldiers emerge from the Trojan horse, Helen looks after Marpessa staying with her until the soldiers arrive. The Greek soldiers sweep through the town capturing all of the women and killing all of the men. Xanthe and her mistress Andromache are captured. The Greek soldiers find Helen and take her and Marpessa to Menelaus, Helen's first husband.

It is the middle of the eighteenth century. Many babies are born into dreadful poverty. Their parents are too poor to feed and clothe them. What is to happen to all these babies? They could go to the Coram Hospital. There they will be cared for and educated until they are old enough to make their own way in the world. This is a "Coram" boy. A man travels round the countryside collecting babies. You have to pay him to take your baby. He promises faithfully to deliver your precious baby to the Coram Hospital. He is the "Coram" man.
What does the Coram man do with the babies? The Coram man is nothing to do with the Coram Hospital. He is making a living out of the misery of others. He is Otis Gardiner and he is evil.
Alexander Ashbrook is the young heir to a great estate. He meets Melissa, who gives birth to Alexander's illegitimate son. Melissa gives the baby to the Coram man.

This book is modelled on James Bond. The ultra-resourceful reluctant spy is 14 year old Alex Rider. When Alex's uncle and guardian, Ian Rider, is murdered on active service, Alex is blackmailed by MI6 into taking over his dangerous mission to investigate the suspect generosity of a bizarre tycoon called Herod Sayle. Herod is well named. He has donated a superb computer called the Stormbreaker to every school in Britain. Each model is implanted with a deadly biological virus. Once the machine is switched on, it will activate with lethal consequences for the nation's children. This evil plot is uncovered by Alex, the reluctant schoolboy agent, nicknamed Double O Nothing. With the aid of ingenious gadgets invented by Smithers, he finally thwarts the mad menace at the Science Museum.

Lyra lives in a society where experimental theology is regarded as the true science, and this seems quite natural in a world where everyone's soul is separate and visible. Every individual shares the journey of his life with a daemon, an animal form which stays close and shares all intimate thoughts. Lyra, and her daemon Pantalaimon, enjoys a carefree existence as an orphan under the haphazard care of Jordan College in Oxford. There she plays with her friend Roger, the kitchen boy, running wild in the College grounds, up on the roofs and down in the crypt.
However children are disappearing. No one knows what happens to them for they are never heard of again, taken by the Gobblers. When the Gobblers come to Oxford their appearance coincides with that of the strange Mrs Coulter. At the same time Roger disappears. Lyra thinks that Mrs Coulter is responsible for the abduction of the children and she is determined to uncover the truth behind the Gobblers and what goes on at the Experimental Station in the remote north.
And she hopes that she might find Roger.

From a silent perch in the upper branches of a great tree, a huge and mysterious bird known as the Skymaster watches over Godhanger Wood. He watches the innocent blood shed daily by the cruel gamekeeper. When the birds determine to save themselves, the gamekeeper finds himself locked in a deadly battle of wills with the greatest prize of all at stake, - the Skymaster himself. But there can only be one winner.

This book is set in Africa, about two hundred thousand years ago. Many kinds of human beings co-exist. Some have developed language and some have not. Some have mastered fire and some have not. Some are going to do well and some are not. One group have been forced to leave their traditional lands. There are not very many of them but they are clever and they have language. This means they can communicate ideas to each other, plan ahead and work co-operatively. The future is theirs. But the present is difficult. There are six children, without adult protection since their parents have been killed or taken in an attack.
In a series of four stories Peter Dickinson traces the progress of the group. Each story is told from the perspective of a different member of the group. They face extraordinary dangers: volcano, earthquake, flood, drought, lion, crocodile and murderous man.
In between the chapters of this book are 'Oldtales' which are the tales which the Kin have made up for themselves to explain the world about them and their own place in it.

The scene is China during the Kublai Khan conquest in thirteenth century China.
It begins with the terrible sudden death of Haoyou's father. Haoyou's father is a poor seaman, but he has a beautiful wife. Di Chou, the corrupt first mate of a ship sends Haoyou's father up into the sky on a wind tester,a kite, to test the omens for their next voyage. but Haoyou's father dies of fright. Di Chou wants to marry Haoyou's newly widowed mother. This sets the scene for the story to really begin, because Haoyou goes to extraordinary lengths to stop the evil Di Chou marrying his mother. His cousin, Mipeng helps him with his daring plan. The plan works as they manage to get rid of Di Chou for a few months but The Great Miao, circus master of the Jade Circus, sees something of Haoyou's antics, and comes to claim him for the circus.
The Great Miao turns Haoyou into Qiqi. The Great Miao plans to take the Jade Circus to perform for the great Kublai Khan himself, the new Mongol conqueror of China. Mipeng goes with Hayou and looks after him in his extraordinary adventures that befall him as a circus kite rider!
But who exactly is The Great Miao? And does he really want to perform for the Kublai Khan?

This is a story about Martin. He's the leader of the Gang of Three, and the classroom joker and popular with his school mates. He lives in the 'new East End' where there is a mixture of white, Caribbean, African and Asian families. His world is turned upside down when against his better judgement he accepts a lift home from someone he knows vaguely from school. He doesn't know the car is stolen. He ends up in a serious road accident and his face is badly burnt. In spite of plastic surgery Martin loses his good looks and in the process his popularity. Martin then has to come to terms with his new and damaged face. Not only that, all his friends have to come to terms with his new face. and Martin has to learn to deal with all the different reactions of ordinary people to his terrible injuries.

To the casual observer Obadiah Demurral is merely the fire and brimstone-preaching Vicar of Thorpe, determined to curb the wilder excesses of his parishioners. But in truth he is an evil sorcerer seeking to control the entire universe. He cheated his way into being the Vicar of Thorpe by persuading the real incumbent, Dagda Sarapuk, to take part in a foolish wager. He has managed to get his hands on a golden statue, the Keruvim, one of only two in the world, and aided by his cowed and terrified servant Beadle he plans to obtain the second statue. Then total power will be his. Ranged against him are two children, Thomas and Kate, Raphah, a thinly disguised Christ-like figure from Africa who is shipwrecked in a storm conjured up by Demurral, and the sinister Jacob Crane, a smuggler. This is a story of good against evil.

Jamie, traumatised by a fire in his home, is sent to stay with his aunt and 16 year old cousin, Alison, in a country village. The village has a history pre-dating the English Civil War. Jamie arrives just as the villagers led by his aunt begin to clear the great chalk carving on a nearby hill, (from which the village gets its name). The carving appears to be that of an old woman, not a crown as had been supposed. Events of the past appear to intrude into the present for Jamie who is now terrified of fire and constantly having nightmares.

In the seven interlinked episodes, Peter Fortune reveals the secret journeys, metamorphoses, and adventures of his childhood. Living somewhere between dream and reality, Peter experiences fantastical transformations: he swaps bodies with the wise old family cat;
exchanges existences with a cranky infant;
encounters a very bad doll who has come to life and is out for revenge;
rummages through a kitchen drawer filled with useless objects to discover some not-so-useless cream that actually makes people vanish.
Finally, he wakes up as an eleven-year-old inside a grown-up body and embarks on the truly fantastic adventure of falling in love.

Jess' grandfather is dying. He can barely move his hands anymore but stubborn as ever he refuses to stay in hospital. He insists on returning to his childhood home for a last holiday so that he can finish his painting, "River Boy". Who is the mysterious River Boy? Jess finds herself caught up in the mysterious painting and when she meets the river boy himself, she finds she is suddenly caught up in a challenge of her own that she must complete, before it is too late.

13 year old Brian Robeson is travelling by plane to visit his father when the pilot dies of a heart attack. The plan crashes in the Canadian wilderness and Brian, the only passenger, is left alone to survive with only the hatchet his mother gave him just before he left.

On an October day in 1272 a boy herding pigs in the great Sussex forest of Andreswald plants an acorn. Over the next six hundred years, from the planting of the acorn to the death of the last branch during the 1939-45 war, the oak shelters deer, boar, a highwayman, a family of badgers, picnickers, a poacher and finally a soldier who plants the very last acorn borne by the mighty oak tree to begin the cycle all over again.

At the beginning of the thirteenth century, the young page Arthur de Caldicot is given a shard of obsidian by his father's friend Merlin. The stone grants the young Arthur the power to see visions of the saga of the legendary King Arthur. Visions of King Arthur's life both in the manor in remote marshes of Wales and in Celtic London when the sword was drawn from the stone. Young Arthur's own life is mirrored by glimpses of the struggles of the King-to-be as Uther Pendragon dies. This is the first book in the Arthur trilogy. The others books are At the Crossing-places and King of the Middle March.

When Winnie stumbles across a spring which can bestow the gift of everlasting life, she also stumbles across the unforgettable Tuck family. The Tucks, having drunk from this spring, will never age, and will never die. With a calm clear-sightedness they have kept the spring's whereabouts secret, realising the harm and chaos full knowledge of it would bring. But the Tucks need to take grave measures when the spring's secret is in danger of being revealed.

Fifteen year old Callum is a nought, a member of the despised racial group which is also an underclass. Meggie, his mother, works as a servant for the Hadley's, (rich Crosses who are members of the racial elite) so Callum has grown up knowing and being friends with their daughter Sephy. Neither of them realises the significance of their respective social status - she is a Cross, he a Nought. The society in which they grow up operates a disturbingly plausible version of apartheid which erodes their innocence. Callum witnesses tragedy within his family due to the draconian laws which Sephy's father, a government minister, oversees. Yet, through it all, an undoubted connection draws them together.

Mary is a witch, or as she says, "so some would call me". The book in the form of a diary, begins in 1659 with torture and hanging for witchcraft of the woman she has always thought of as her grandmother. How is it that Mary has been saved? She has been rescued by a mysterious woman dressed as a puritan. Mary joins those who are emigrating to America in the hope of a better life. But the fear of witches travels with her.
The sequel is now out and is called The Sorceress.

Laurie Lee describes his childhood in a remote Cotswold village. A world that has for the most part vanished. A world of silence, of white roads, rutted by hooves and cartwheels, a world without petrol and oil. It tells the tale of Laurie growing up in a large family with only his mother for guidance. Their father has left them and his wonderful scatty mother has trouble coping.

"It's like we're living two separate lives in two separate worlds, Tommo," Charlie tells his brother on returning to the trenches after a stint back home to recover from an injury. "I never want the one to touch on the other." And so he has not told his mother, his new wife Molly, or his simple-minded eldest brother Joe about the terror of a gas attack, the carnage in the mud, the lice, the rats and the sheer exhaustion of staying alert to Fritz. He has said not a word about seeing childhood friends with blank eyes and a bullet-hole in the head, about waiting for the next bullet or shell to have his own name or that of his brother written on it.

It is left to Tommo to bring the two worlds together in his mind, and it is this that he does as he waits through his long night. He remembers his first boots for school, his fear of his bullying teacher. He still loves the girl from his first class who ended up marrying his brother. He can still dream the monstrous dreams about his mother's aunt, Grandma Wolf, like some grotesque being from a fairy tale, who used to strap him daily. More than anything else, he carries with him the guilty secret about his father's accidental death under a falling tree.

The book is centred around the battle between Alfonso, an amazingly intuitive musician, who has also inherited his family's ability to command the inner fire of Mount Etna, and his uncle, Georgio, the current Master of the Mountain, who has determined to use his power in pursuit of the Elixir of Life. Alfonso discovers that his uncle has systematically worked to remove all opposition or threat of exposure, using his knowledge to kill Alfonso's parents, and silence his critics. Alfonso discovers that Georgio intends to sacrifice both him and Toni, his uncle's unacknowledged son, who is apparently a deaf mute, to enable him to obtain everlasting life. Secretly he uses his own growing knowledge of his gifts, and Toni's latent Master's skills to free the salamander whose tears restore his aging uncle's health, and to turn the mountain's fire upon its Master, destroying his evil regime.

This the omnibus edition of Judith Kerr's Hitler trilogy, tells the story of Anna; beginning with the rise of Hitler in 1933 through to her return to Berlin years after the war.

Book 1: When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit

Anna is too busy with schoolwork and tobogganing to listen to the grown-ups' talk of Hitler. But one day she and her brother are rushed out of Germany in alarming secrecy, away from everything they know. Their father is wanted by the Nazis--dead or alive. It is the start of a huge adventure, sometimes frightening, very often funny, and always, always exciting.

Book 2: Bombs on Aunt Dainty

It is hard enough being a teenager in London during the Blitz, finding yourself in love and wondering every night whether you will survive the bombs. But it is even harder for Anna, who is still officially classified as an "enemy alien". Those bombs are coming from Germany - the country that was once her own. If Hitler invades, can she and her beloved refugee family possibly survive?

Book 3: A Small Person Far Away

Berlin is where Anna lived before Hitler, when she was still a German child; before she spoke a word of English, before her family had all become refugees. Long before her happy new existence in London. But Mama is there, dangerously ill. Anna is forced to go back, to deal with questions of life and death, to face old fears, and to discover the past which she has so long shut away.