Just So Stories

Random Reviews and Ramblings from Redcliffe


  • Nightshade – Anthony Horowitz

      Walker Books Australia April 2020 ISBN: 9781406395877 Imprint: Walker Australian RRP: $16.99 New Zealand RRP: $18.99 Coming hard on the heels of the 20th anniversary of Alex Rider’s first adventure – Stormbreaker – is even more high-octane heart-pumping tension as Alex plunges deep into a mysterious organisation known as Nightshade. Once again Alex is an unwilling recruit into…

  • The Lost Tide Warriors – Catherine Doyle

    Bloomsbury September 2019 ISBN: 9781408896907 Imprint: Bloomsbury Children’s Books Series: The Storm Keeper Trilogy   The first in this trilogy The Storm Keeper’s Island was a fantastic read and this sequel equally stacks up in the page-turning excitement department. Fionn Boyle is now six months into his acknowledged role as the new Storm Keeper of…

  • The Ghost of Howler’s Beach (The Butter O’Bryan Mysteries #1)  – Jackie French

    Harper Collins Australia February 2020 ISBN: 9781460757727 ISBN 10: 1460757726 List Price: 16.99 AUD   To most folks Butter O’Bryan would seem a lucky boy.  In a time when many people are destitute and homeless he lives in a large and comfortable house, known as the Very Small Castle, he has three eccentric but loving aunts –  known…

  • League of Llamas – Aleesah Darlison

    Visit Aleesah’s webpage here   Penguin March 2020 RRP: $9.99   Well… Aleesah’s new series is bound to be a hit with junior/middle primary readers with galloping (I’m not sure llamas actually gallop but still…) plots, high octane humour and loads of adventure. I knew that James Bond is currently having a contemporised make over but…

  • The Secret Commonwealth – Philip Pullman

    The Book of Dust Volume Two Published: 3 October 2019 ISBN: 9780241373347 Imprint: Penguin and David Fickling Books Format: Trade Paperback Pages: 784 RRP: $32.99 Surely one of the most highly anticipated sequels ever – or was that just me? (I don’t think so!) I wasn’t sure what to expect but it wasn’t this – and I mean that in a…

  • Pages & Co [Book 2]: Tilly and the Lost Fairy Tales – Anna James

    Harper Collins September 2019 ISBN: 9780008229900 ISBN 10: 0008229902 Imprint: HarperCollins – GB List Price: 19.99 AUD Once more Tilly and Oskar are plunged into a whirl of adventure and mystery as their book-wandering travels continue. Their world and their families are in a state of flux as the British Underlibrary becomes embroiled in turmoil. The new Librarian Melville…

  • The Wizards of Once: Knock Three Times: #3 – Cressida Cowell

    Hachette SEP 24, 2019 | 9781444941470 | RRP $19.99 Not strange at all – looking up and seeing three children clutching a magical flying door high above a forest. Well ok, perhaps a magical door flying is a tiny bit odd but not in a Cressida Cowell fantasy/adventure! Xar, Wish and little Bodkin are escaping their Warrior and Wizard…

  • Kensy and Max #4: Out of Sight – Jacqueline Harvey

    Penguin September 2019 ISBN: 9780143791928 Imprint: Puffin RRP: $16.99 Just as life for the intrepid and resilient twins seems to be settling with both their parents and their grandparents restored to the family, the London house habitable again and being back at school with their friends, things start hotting up.  Their upcoming first Pharos review is doubtless a…

  • Everest: The Remarkable Story of Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay – Alexandra Stewart/Joe Todd-Stanton

      Bloomsbury May 2019 ISBN: 9781526600769 Imprint: Bloomsbury Children’s Books RRP: $24.99 As a child of the 50s the names of Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay were as familiar to me as the names of my friends. Though I was born a few years after their remarkable expedition their names still resounded around the globe.…

  • Final Storm – Deborah Abela

    Penguin August 2019 ISBN: 9780143794462 Imprint: Puffin RRP: $16.99 When Deborah Abela started her ‘cranky climate change’ series it was because she was prompted to do so by the refusal of world governments to take action against the obvious and dangerous climatic changes threatening the world as we know it. A decade after the publication of Grimsdon our…