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This is an adventure story set against a family bereavement: Chad, Kate and their father try to build a new life while travelling for their company.

This is a high-stakes adventure about belonging, trust and inherited beliefs. Petrel’s rescue of a mysterious boy brings her out of hiding and into conflicts involving shipboard factions, lost history and hostility towards technology.

This is a fast-moving disaster story centred on children confronting a hurricane’s danger, while also carrying family worries, illness and efforts to reach or help people and animals.

This is a short, issue-focused story about a bereaved teenager navigating care, exploitation and attachment. Its strongest offering is a morally unsettled relationship in which practical survival and harming others are kept in tension.

This is a historical story about children managing family responsibilities and practical work during a storm, while also facing uncertainty about illness, separation and an immigrant family’s future.

This is a high-stakes wilderness survival adventure centred on a young scout trying to reach help after a bus crash, while dangerous animals and an unknown half-human, half-animal presence intensify the journey.

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.

A coming-of-age novel combining stage magic and family strain with serious mental-health, financial and bereavement themes. Ellie’s efforts to help her father create a fast-moving story, while the subject matter can become emotionally heavy.

This is a factual wildlife book about the varied ways animals care for their young, using examples such as emperor penguins and giant anteaters to introduce survival and evolution.

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.

This is an emotionally intense, socially engaged story of young people facing bereavement, family instability, discrimination and addiction. Its perspective shifts and layered histories invite sustained attention, while compassion, accountability, faith and hope remain important strands.

A challenging dystopian story about censorship, conformity and media distraction, with strong literary ideas alongside deaths, suicide attempts, substance misuse and frightening pursuit. Its central value lies in inviting readers to question how information and independence are protected.

This is a serious historical novel about Hiroshima’s bombing and its long aftermath for one family. Its movement between prose, poetry and haiku gives the story a distinctive shape, while the paper cranes connect grief, promises and hope.

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.

A tense story about a young person trying to escape a parent’s extreme survivalist rules while navigating foster care, distrust and the possibility of being found. Its emotional force comes from Amber’s guarded, sharply ironic voice.

A tense story about girls seeking safety and belonging under Sol’s control. As new relationships and demands unsettle the cabin, the book follows questions of loyalty, selfhood, survival and whether protection can become coercion.

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.

This is a wartime survival adventure combining danger, horses and displaced children. Its central appeal is resourceful young protagonists protecting vulnerable beings, while the historical setting brings serious questions about war, loss and responsibility.

A fast-moving historical fantasy that places a child and a growing phoenix inside the Great Fire of London. Maps, historical events and an imagined creature create an adventurous route through danger, trust and responsibility.

This offers a straightforward survival thriller built around a countdown, extremist beliefs and attacks in a familiar city. Its strongest appeal is likely suspense and danger rather than deeply developed character exploration.

This is an adventure about survival and an unusual cross-generational friendship. Alongside practical danger, it gives substantial space to loneliness, care, learning and the ways a relationship can change someone’s view of the world.

This is a sustained post-apocalyptic survival story in which blindness, predatory plants and human power struggles reshape everyday life. It offers danger, moral choices and competing ideas about how society might be rebuilt after catastrophe.

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 demanding, historically grounded family story that combines severe hardship with compassion, solidarity and social criticism. Its emotional force comes from people trying to preserve dignity and connection while facing displacement, hunger and injustice.

Expect a fast-moving, high-threat story centred on escape, survival and the choices Luka makes when prison control collapses. Its imaginative future setting is paired with frightening creatures, bodily danger and questions about justice.

A tense, emotionally serious survival story follows Ade through a collapsing city while his mother withdraws and neighbours become an unexpected support network. Its strongest offering is a child-centred exploration of vulnerability, responsibility and collective care.

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.

Marya and Georgi set out alone after their parents are arrested and separated. Their route towards Siberia brings danger, uncertainty and encounters with people who may help, while Marya’s narration follows the strain of caring for her younger brother.

This is a serious coming-of-age novel about a young person trying to make a life after family damage. Its emotional centre is the tension between survival, intimacy, responsibility and the limits of one person’s ability to rescue another.

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.

An action adventure about a young team whose aid mission becomes a pursuit across the Sahara. Desert survival, kidnapping and a child-slavery plot drive the story towards confrontation with the villains.

A lively, fact-led introduction to baby foxes, combining clear explanations with photographs, realistic artwork, labelled diagrams, questions, an index and practical activities.

This is an emotionally direct survival story in which a young narrator records movement, deprivation and painful memories. Its outlook is hopeful, but the route towards help includes frightening and distressing experiences.

This is a personal Holocaust memoir centred on Riva’s separation from her family, imprisonment and determination to survive. It presents endurance alongside persecution, bereavement and occasional kindness.

This is an animal survival story in which two vulnerable characters become stronger through cooperation. Its traditional Indigenous Australian storytelling style frames a clear interest in friendship, reconciliation and environmental care.

This is an adventure about a reluctant return, responsibility towards vulnerable animals and urgent rescue during violent unrest.

This book uses an imaginative household situation to make animal facts approachable. It moves from wondering how a tiger might be cared for towards understanding its real habitat, survival needs and place in the wild.

This is an animal-centred adventure about a herd seeking sustenance, an injured stallion, and a boy whose unusual connection with horses challenges the herd's boundaries.

A magical adventure about cousins who become responsible for a newly hatched dragon, combining practical problem-solving with a threat from the dragon’s long-lived enemy.

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 high-stakes island survival adventure combining stranded classmates, dolphins, wildlife and Martine’s unusual healing gift. Its central situation brings human disagreement and animal welfare into the same urgent challenge.

This is a dark fantasy about protecting someone you love when power seems absolute. Stories become a means of survival and change, while grief, fear and mysterious magic connect two sisters across distance.