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The story centres on Anaxandra’s resourcefulness as she repeatedly adopts another identity to stay safe. Greek mythological figures and the growing conflict between Sparta and Troy frame her struggle to find security and a sense of home.

A visually rich, unsettling adventure about children resisting monstrous forces, The Wrenchies combines action, loneliness, loyalty and artistic imagination. Its fragmented storytelling leaves some mysteries unresolved rather than explaining every element.

This is a high-stakes survival story about three teenagers fleeing danger, with friendship and hope providing emotional counterweights to fear, loss and an uncertain journey.

This is a school-and-survival story about two people misreading each other. Its strongest material concerns how assumptions shape behaviour, while Mark’s growing attachment to the outdoors gives the book a reflective strand alongside its danger.

This is a creepy, story-rich fantasy about a young writer using imagination under pressure. Its strongest appeal is the blend of escape adventure, friendship and attention to how stories are made.

A tense frontier survival adventure in which three children evade outlaws, endure severe hardship and discover treasure. It offers resourcefulness, loyalty and historical setting alongside frightening danger, bereavement and family separation.

This is an informational collection of women’s wartime experiences, spanning roles such as medical work, journalism, resistance and revolutionary activity. It presents participation on multiple sides of the Vietnam War rather than treating the conflict as an all-male story.

A fast-moving historical adventure about two samurai sisters who leave an unsafe school to find their mother and younger brother, while facing danger and pursuing family honour.

This offers multiple literary forms and personal perspectives on Holocaust experiences, including survival and life afterwards. It may invite thoughtful comparison between voices, rather than provide one continuous narrative.

This is a speculative survival thriller about a teenager separated from her familiar world and confronted by a society that rejects medicine. Expect danger, mystery, pursuit and questions about how authority controls knowledge.

This is an emotionally intense survival story about grief, anxiety and changing relationships. Its suspenseful wilderness episodes sit alongside Case’s uncertain understanding of his brother and the difficult process of living after loss.

Expect an urgent survival adventure in which two children must respond to rising danger after extreme weather separates them from their group. Its environmental focus sits alongside friendship, courage and the pressures of fitting in.

A lively read-aloud about a lost dog’s imagined adventures, using rhyme, humour and expressive illustrations to explore survival, landscape, curiosity and the pull of home.

A focused, dual-narrative historical novel about displacement, survival and access to water. Its language is spare, but the experiences include war, deaths and severe deprivation, balanced by perseverance and collective problem-solving.

Readers get a varied set of true survival accounts, from exploration and shipwreck to accidents and medical crises, with illustrations highlighting pivotal moments. The emphasis is on extraordinary ordeals rather than one continuous narrative.

A tense survival adventure places young people in a natural disaster and gives Dylan and Louie difficult practical and emotional problems to solve. Its strongest thread appears to be movement from suspicion towards cooperation.

This is an information-led guide to responding to hazards, including dangerous animals, natural disasters, human dangers, navigation, first aid and rescue. It offers preparation-focused content rather than a sustained fictional storyline.

This is a survival adventure centred on resilience, resourcefulness, grief and connection with nature. Karana's growing self-sufficiency drives the story, while her isolation and the treatment of Indigenous characters add weight beyond the adventure.

A fast-moving survival adventure where four children must depend on one another in an unfamiliar rainforest. Alongside practical dangers, it explores courage, trust, fear, friendship and the difficult choices needed to keep going.

This is a survival adventure about dependent pets forced into an unknown, dangerous world. Its emotional centre is the animals’ struggle to cope, cooperate and change when familiar human protection disappears.

Expect a bleak flooded setting, solitary travel, danger from other young people and a determined search for family. The ending is described as positive, although the journey is repeatedly presented as harrowing and gloomy.

This is a fast-moving wartime escape story combining orphanhood, sibling loyalty and espionage. Its child characters repeatedly make difficult choices while trying to survive danger, loss and separation.

This is a war novel centred on a young woman’s divided loyalties: caring for the wounded, protecting family and considering escape. It offers an emotionally intense perspective on civilian danger, responsibility and hope.

A horror premise places Charity and her friends inside a frightening version of the attraction they work in. Expect slasher suspense, dark humour, romance, disappearances and graphic violence, alongside questions about survival and familiar genre roles.

A reflective story of two girls connected through dreams, grief and a Welsh poem. Its interest lies in the developing bond between contemporary school life and an imagined medieval world.

A dark, atmospheric story for readers who enjoy ghosts, folklore, natural magic and narratives that connect across time. Three girls face danger and loss while their stories gradually converge around a threatening presence in the woods.

An intense survival adventure centred on persistence, practical problem-solving and changing self-understanding. Brian’s isolation makes ordinary needs—food, shelter, fire and safety—into urgent challenges, while the wilderness remains dangerous rather than comfortably picturesque.

This is a survival adventure that places a frightened, newly blind boy in prolonged dependence on Timothy. Its strongest material concerns trust, practical resilience and the painful unlearning of racial prejudice.

A school mystery gives Alex and David a route into an uneasy friendship. The story looks closely at how fear, peer pressure and self-protection shape choices, while using the Icarus idea to frame risk, hope and possible escape.

This is a concentrated story of an ageing fisherman’s prolonged struggle at sea. It offers quiet reflection, precise physical detail and a serious meditation on perseverance, pride, loss and what achievement means when results do not last.

This is a high-pressure survival mystery built around an unseen shooter, a confined setting and secrets among friends. Its interest lies in suspense, shifting trust and how people respond when cooperation becomes necessary.

Expect a tense survival mystery built around kidnapping, an isolated camp, family betrayal, shifting suspicion and deaths. Its emotional centre is Liv’s effort to retain her moral judgement when silence might feel safer.

This is a compact first-person adventure combining wartime escape, Himalayan survival and an encounter with a hidden yeti society. Its central imaginative tension is whether Ashley’s influence would help or harm people whose way of life he admires.

A tense historical adventure about separated siblings and Jan, a young thief who joins them. Its strongest qualities are resourcefulness, loyalty and compassion, alongside a serious portrayal of children navigating war’s aftermath.

Expect an energetic treasure-hunt adventure involving tunnels, caves, ruins, a hidden weapon and suspected betrayal. Its central appeal is discovery under pressure, with Tom’s street-smarts and his friends’ trust tested as the expedition unfolds.

This is a fast-moving science-fiction adventure built around an alien hunter, a threatened town and a villain who stages destruction for television. It offers danger, imaginative powers and a strong conflict between protection and exploitation.

This is a survivor-centred historical novel about the Rwandan genocide, following Jeanne from ordinary family life through persecution, flight, massacre and survival. Its focus is one family’s experience rather than a general history of Rwanda.

This is a quest adventure combining fantasy, humour, danger and deception. Its strongest thread appears to be the contrast between chasing wealth and finding courage, companionship and a sense of home.

This is an animal-centred survival and friendship story, balancing Ratchet’s dangers with Mike’s patient attempt to understand her. It also brings animal behaviour and overlooked urban nature into the foreground.

This is a factual, story-led collection about animals involved in wartime. It combines rescue, communication, morale and service with a gentle, sometimes uplifting presentation, while acknowledging that some animals died.

This is a high-stakes historical adventure about four teenagers undertaking a dangerous sabotage mission after an earlier attempt has failed. Its setting combines wartime urgency with prolonged exposure to freezing conditions.

A maritime adventure about a teenager whose dream job becomes dangerous when secrecy, illegal treasure-hunting and a threatening captain put his judgement and survival under pressure.

This is a peril-focused magical adventure about a young hero developing powers while resisting a dangerous opponent. Its appeal appears to lie in courage, friendship, nature and a contest for survival.

This is a historical time-travel adventure built around Amelia Earhart’s planned 1937 flight. Young investigators pursue the mystery of her disappearance while confronting danger, secret plans and questions of faith.

A historical adventure about survival, samurai training and belonging, with friendship and rivalry alongside bereavement, physical danger and bullying.

Readers get a varied set of true survival accounts, from exploration and shipwreck to accidents and medical crises, with illustrations highlighting pivotal moments. The emphasis is on extraordinary ordeals rather than one continuous narrative.