From beloved author Katherine Rundell comes a clever, funny, and poignant picture book about a lonely little boy who wishes not to be alone on Christmas.A young boy's Christmas Eve wish on a shooting star leads to an adventure with an ever-hungry rocking horse, an angel whose wings are molting, a robin who has forgotten how to sing, and a rusting tin drummer boy in Katherine Rundell's classic Christmas story, with Emily Sutton's gorgeous paintings.

'A rare and magical book. I didn't want it to end.' Bill Bryson'A total miracle.' Max Porter'A witty, intoxicating paean to Earth's wondrous creatures.' Observer'Rundell's pen is gold-tipped.' Sunday Times** SHORTLISTED FOR WATERSTONES BOOK OF THE YEAR **The world is more astonishing, more miraculous and more wonderful than our wildest imaginings.In this passionately persuasive and sharply funny book, Katherine Rundell tells us how and why.A lavishly illustrated collection of the lives of some of the Earth's most astounding animals, The Golden Mole is a chance to be awestruck and lovestruck - to reckon with the beauty of the world, its fragility, and its strangeness.A swift flies two million kilometres in its lifetime. That's far enough to get to the moon and back twice over - and then once more to the moon. A pangolin keeps its tongue furled in a pouch by its hip, a Greenland...

'Rundell is the real deal, a writer of boundless gifts and extraordinary imaginative power whose novels will be read, cherished and reread long after most so-called "serious" novels are forgotten' ObserverKatherine Rundell – Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and prize-winning author of five novels for children – explores how children's books ignite, and can re-ignite, the imagination; how children's fiction, with its unabashed emotion and playfulness, can awaken old hungers and create new perspectives on the world. This delightful and persuasive essay is for adult readers.

From standout scholar Katherine Rundell, Super-Infinite presents a sparkling and very modern biography of John Donne: the poet of love, sex, and death.Sometime religious outsider and social disaster, sometime celebrity preacher and establishment darling, John Donne was incapable of being just one thing.In his myriad lives he was a scholar of law, a sea adventurer, a priest, an MP - and perhaps the greatest love poet in the history of the English language. Along the way he converted from Catholicism to Protestantism, was imprisoned for marrying a sixteen-year old girl without her father's consent; struggled to feed a family of ten children; and was often ill and in pain. He was a man who suffered from black surges of misery, yet expressed in his verse many breathtaking impressions of electric joy and love.

'An amazing adventure story, told with sparkling style and sleight of hand' JACQUELINE WILSONVita set her jaw, and nodded at New York City in greeting, as a boxer greets an opponent before a fight.Fresh off the boat from England, Vita Marlowe has a job to do. Her beloved grandfather Jack has been cheated out of his home and possessions by a notorious conman with Mafia connections. Seeing Jack's spirit is broken, Vita is desperate to make him happy again, so she devises a plan to outwit his enemies and recover his home. She finds a young pickpocket, working the streets of the city. And, nearby, two boys with highly unusual skills and secrets of their own are about to be pulled into her lawless, death-defying plan.Katherine Rundell's fifth novel is a heist as never seen before - the story of a group of children who will do anything to right a wrong.

Embrace possibility in this luminous novel about a girl in search of her past who discovers a secret rooftop world in Paris.Everyone thinks that Sophie is an orphan. True, there were no other recorded female survivors from the shipwreck that left baby Sophie floating in the English Channel in a cello case, but Sophie remembers seeing her mother wave for help. Her guardian tells her it is almost impossible that her mother is still alive?but ?almost impossible? means ?still possible.? And you should never ignore a possible. So when the Welfare Agency writes to her guardian, threatening to send Sophie to an orphanage, she takes matters into her own hands and flees to Paris to look for her mother, starting with the only clue she has? the address of the cello maker. Evading the French authorities, she meets Matteo and his network of rooftoppers?urchins who live in the hidden spaces above the city. Together they scour the city in a search for...

Even a life on the untamed plains of Africa can't prepare Wilhelmina for the wilds of an English boarding school in this lovely and lyrical novel from the author of Rooftoppers, which Booklist called "a glorious adventure."Wilhelmina Silver's world is golden. Living half-wild on an African farm with her horse, her monkey, and her best friend, every day is beautiful. But when her home is sold and Will is sent away to boarding school in England, the world becomes impossibly difficult. Lions and hyenas are nothing compared to packs of vicious schoolgirls. Where can a girl run to in London? And will she have the courage to survive? From the author of the "witty, inventively poetic" Rooftoppers comes an utterly beautiful story that's sure to be treasured.

'There was Tolkien, there is Pullman and now there is Katherine Rundell. Wondrous invention, marvellous writing.' – Michael MorpurgoThere's a place where all the wildest stories began ... From Katherine Rundell, winner of the Costa Children's Book Award, the Blue Peter Book Award and the Waterstones Children's Book Prize comes the first novel in a landmark trilogy for 9+ fans of His Dark MaterialsIt was a very fine day, until something tried to eat him. A boy called Christopher is visiting his reclusive grandfather when he witnesses an avalanche of mythical creatures come tearing down the hill. This is how Christopher learns that his grandfather is the guardian of one of the ways between the non-magical world and a place called the Archipelago, a cluster of magical islands where all the creatures we tell of in myth live and breed and thrive alongside humans. They have been...

A girl and the wolves who love her embark on a rescue mission through Russian wilderness in this lyrical tale from the author of the acclaimed Rooftoppers and Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms.Feo’s life is extraordinary. Her mother trains domesticated wolves to be able to fend for themselves in the snowy wilderness of Russia, and Feo is following in her footsteps to become a wolf wilder. She loves taking care of the wolves, especially the three who stay at the house because they refuse to leave Feo, even though they’ve already been wilded. But not everyone is enamored with the wolves, or with the fact that Feo and her mother are turning them wild. And when her mother is taken captive, Feo must travel through the cold, harsh woods to save her—and learn from her wolves how to survive. From the author of Rooftoppers, which Booklist called “a glorious adventure,” and Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms, which VOYA...

From his seat in the tiny aeroplane, Fred watches as the mysteries of the Amazon jungle pass by below him. He has always dreamed of becoming an explorer, of making history and of reading his name amongst the lists of great discoveries. If only he could land and look about him.As the plane crashes into the canopy, Fred is suddenly left without a choice. He and the three other children may be alive, but the jungle is a vast, untamed place. With no hope of rescue, the chance of getting home feels impossibly small.Except, it seems, someone has been there before them ...