This time, the book goes back to the beginning with the story of the original ship's boy and what happens when he and several other crew are set adrift after their vessel is seized by pirates.
A mysterious Mr Wicker saves the boy but at a price, for he turns him into an invisible creature that flies so he can find a mysterious piece of dangerous scientific equipment.
Lively and clever, The Pirates and The Nightmaker was written while Norcliffe was author in residence at the University of Otago School of Education. Ages 8-12.
Becs is 15 and when she meets bad boy Bracken, she is convinced this is true love.
He's older, out in the world and his dangerous edge adds to his appeal.
She feels safe with him but is she?
In the area where she lives, girls, including her friend Mary Jane, have been sexually assaulted and the reader wonders if the criminal could be Bracken.
Pretty Thing is supposedly set in England in the 1970s, but little in Jennifer Nagel's debut novel feels like that time.
The descriptions, even of some of the clothes, and the issues explored appear more contemporary in every way, including the ending, which - like the rest of the book - is rather bleak. Ages 14+.
Sisters Dara and Nicola were once inseparable but things go so wrong between them that when Dara disappears on her birthday, Nicola thinks it's just an act.
Dara, whose once beautiful face has been scarred in a car accident for which her sister is responsible, does not return and when another girl goes missing the situation becomes much more worrying.
Nicola assumes the two disappearances are linked and sets out to track down her sister.
Vanishing Girls, by best selling American writer Lauren Oliver, is a strong, multilayered story about love and loss, the relationships between sisters and the anguish of first love. Ages 14+.
Gillian Vine is a Dunedin journalist.
