What Are You Looking For?

A fantasy escape story built around a prison on an immense scale, uncertain origins and a connection between Finn and Claudia, who are on opposite sides of its boundary.

A Snow White retelling, the story centres on Sophie’s attempt to get away from a jealous stepmother and Gabe’s effort to bring her to his family’s castle. Escape brings new complications as their feelings grow despite existing betrothals.

A fast-moving premise combines a secretive organisation, a flight into hiding and a mystery tied to Jimmy’s new experiences. The book appears to centre on what he can prove and whom he can convince.

Choose this for a spooky, participatory adventure rather than a linear story. Its main appeal is agency: the reader travels through a perilous historical setting, makes decisions and may reach one of many endings.

Expect a light adventure combining a mischievous puppy, a cruise setting and a mystery. The children’s efforts to conceal Bagels create comic problems, while possible spies and a secret envelope add suspense.

A richly imaginative fantasy that combines adventure with reflection on identity, wishes and responsibility. Its layered realities and symbolic design may appeal to readers who enjoy wonder that asks them to pause and think.

This is a compact, atmospheric horror story where lavish celebration is set against plague and mortality. Its strongest appeal is the deliberate use of colour, rooms, sound and theatrical suspense rather than detailed psychological development.

This offers a whimsical romance about a girl weighing escape and social advancement against love for a childhood friend. Its central tension is whether a seemingly attractive opportunity should determine Gracepearl’s future.

Four Brontë siblings create and enter imagined worlds shaped by their writing. The fantasy reframes their isolation, bereavements and approaching adulthood, while asking what creativity costs when escape begins to compete with ordinary life.

A fast-moving modern Cinderella story centres on a girl using her singing talent to seek a different life. Expect familiar fairy-tale patterns, family conflict and a performance-driven route towards independence.

This is a visual fairy tale centred on a princess whose unusual rainbow coat, concealed identity and appearance at a masked ball drive the story. Expect transformation, mystery and social-status contrasts rather than everyday realism.

Follow Nathaniel from a Jamaican plantation to England, where his belief that English soil means freedom is tested. His hopes for escape and his family’s future drive the story.

This is an emotionally intense verse novel about a young person seeking freedom within a controlling family situation. Its rhythmic, varied presentation foregrounds Amber’s inner life, while running, friendship and resistance provide movement and moments of agency.

This is a powerful but deeply distressing story about a child enduring abuse and isolation, with friendship providing moments of refuge. Its suspense comes from the gradual disclosure of what happened after.

A whimsical, suspenseful fantasy about escaping ordinary life and confronting danger, with a bittersweet focus on childhood and growing up. Its imaginative appeal sits alongside language and attitudes that require historical distance.

This is an adventure about cousins facing separation, institutional hardship and an adult’s deceptive scheme. Their escape becomes a journey towards help, with danger from both human wrongdoing and wolves along the way.

This is a dark historical escape narrative: Alice seeks freedom from family control, but her new community’s leader may impose a different form of entrapment. Its shifting viewpoints broaden the story beyond Alice’s experience.

A tense young-adult thriller about abuse, betrayal and escape, with Oz writing letters to his dead father as he confronts an abusive home life and a dangerous institution.

This is an identity-and-belonging story in which changing place does not resolve Rico’s outsider feelings. It offers a serious exploration of race, friendship, family strain and the search for home.

This is a historical mystery about ambition, family connections and compromised choices. Kit’s attempt to build an independent life becomes entangled with Nate’s demands, Billy’s absence and secrets reaching into the past.

This is an intense family drama about escaping violence while recognising that being harmed does not remove responsibility for harming someone else. Its focus is emotional recovery, accountability and difficult family loyalties rather than sensational action.

This is a fantasy adventure about a child seeking escape, discovering flight and confronting the consequences of exchanging identities. It combines mysterious magical rules with questions of family, belonging and what makes someone human.

This is a family-centred story about Florian’s attempt to get away from his sister’s cancer and the strain surrounding it. His escape involves secrecy and rule-breaking, while camp offers social and romantic distractions that do not fully remove his worries.

A dark, imaginative adventure about a child trapped in an uncanny mechanical London, combining peril, strange inventions and a possible escape quest involving a legendary clockwork bird.

A historical adventure about loyalty and determined problem-solving, set in the Florida Keys in 1912 as Eddie investigates the accusation against his father.

A dreamy, emotionally focused story about artistic identity, truth and difficult choices. Its imaginative premise gives Mercedes room to create, while personal uncertainty keeps the conflict grounded in relationships and loss.

This is a dark coming-of-age story about competing pressures: Finn’s wish to help his sister, his drug use and dealing, academic failure, popularity and search for peace. Bird-watching offers a contrasting strand to his increasingly unstable choices.

This is a tense coming-of-age story about a young person shaped by family history, fear and uncertain loyalties. Friday’s movement from running away to confronting the past suggests a focus on identity, belonging and difficult choices.

This is a strange, fairy-tale-inflected escape adventure about a child discovering a wider world after a highly restrictive upbringing. Its appeal lies in Liberty’s unusual circumstances, imaginative discoveries and search for a personally meaningful future.

A young protagonist’s attempt to leave his old life behind becomes a journey involving institutional care, companions, family estrangement and the possibility that escape cannot settle what remains unresolved.

This is a magic-centred story about changing other people’s view of you. Mike’s progress at school sits alongside a challenge involving reputation and resourcefulness when an exciting family possibility becomes public.

This is a fantasy rescue adventure about a young prince challenging parental authority to help someone in danger. It offers peril, a fantastical setting and an ending that leaves room for more adventures.

This is a fast-moving desert fantasy about escape, rebellion and self-discovery, with mythical creatures and a developing romance at its centre. Amani’s journey moves from longing for freedom towards dangerous involvement in a wider political struggle.

A historical adventure with a strong mystery engine: an unusual brooch opens a path into 1932, where circus friendships, a rescue mission and questions about identity draw Claire into the story.

A brisk mystery-adventure centred on a young performer who investigates a suspicious death while pursuing answers about his missing father and imprisoned mother. Escapology provides an unusual skill set, while the numbered clue drives the central puzzle.