Remember Victorian ‘invasion literature’? It’s back
In Sarah Merrett’s thrilling debut, The Others, set in 1900, a young boy loses his astronomer grandmother – and finds a wounded alien
![An illustration by Ewa Beniak-Haremska in Sarah Merrett's The Others](https://cdn.statically.io/img/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/books/2024/07/04/TELEMMGLPICT000384183750_17200859787980_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bq25J_a2S8_BeNTvBeumPWflEsDn7Cfh7vPSa20qiClTg.jpeg?imwidth=350)
In Sarah Merrett’s thrilling debut, The Others, set in 1900, a young boy loses his astronomer grandmother – and finds a wounded alien
The Fun We Had, a beautiful, gentle, rhyming story by Charissa Coulthard, sees a little girl visit her elderly grandmother, and reminisce
Time Runs like a River, Emma Carlisle’s latest book, uses gentle illustrations and lilting rhymes to foster a surprisingly deep message
Mayowa and the Sea of Words, Chibundu Onuzo’s debut novel, about a girl who takes on a Right-wing MP, sacrifices plot to preaching
Ember Spark and the Thunder of Dragons, by Abi Elphinstone, has a conspiratorial narrator, a fizzing plot and even some sensible lessons
In Betty Steady and the Toad Witch, Nicky Smith-Dale’s enthusiasm for a peculiar world of mice and boiled eggs proves infectious
Lucy Strange is the queen of Gothic chillers for children - and her sixth novel, The Island at the Edge of Night, doesn’t disappoint
In Dev Kothari’s delightful debut novel, Lena investigates her brother’s disappearance from an overnight express train in India
This edition, abridged by scholar Anjna Chouhan and the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, manages to preserve astounding amounts of poetry
Clare Pollard’s first children’s book, The Untameables, puts a fresh spin on the Camelot myth with an adventuring 10-year-old hero
What Rosa Brought, which Jacob Sager Weinstein based on his mother’s childhood, is hauntingly told and sharply illustrated by Eliza Wheeler
The late Kate Saunders, it transpires, left behind A Drop of Golden Sun, a multi-layered story of children working on a war film
The Girl Who Wasn’t There is typically chatty and humorous, and led by a young heroine who sees what adults don’t
Compass and Blade, by Rachel Greenlaw, follows a teenage girl who must save her ‘wrecker’ father from brutal officialdom
Miss Cat, a sleuthing tale by Joëlle Jolivet and Jean-Luc Fromental, blends an old-fashioned crime caper with a wonderfully eccentric mood
If you’re strapped for half-term fun, take some cues from Van Gogh and Hokusai, via Ruth Millington’s This Book Will Make You an Artist