Showing results by author "Di Riddell" in All Categories

Fifty short stories by women writers who broke the mould.

When Terri and Paxton meet during their teen years, their worlds collide into a messy, beautiful, forbidden love.

I came to Mesa Palms for a fresh start after my divorce. Needing the serenity and calm of the desert, I spend my afternoons as a DJ rocking the city. It might not be the most glamorous job, but I love the no-frills life and answering only to my cat. That is, until one day, England’s biggest God of Nu Rock walks in like he owns the place, and my boss forces me to interview the arrogant jerk on-air.

Lord Goth is throwing a music festival at Ghastly-Gorm Hall, with performances from the finest composers in the land. Ada can't wait, but it's quite distracting when her grandmother is trying to find her father a fashionable new wife, there's a faun living in her wardrobe and Maltravers is up to his old tricks. Ada must make sure everything goes to plan...and luckily, help is at hand from a very interesting houseguest.

Little Green Raincape is on her way to Rapunzel's party, deep in the wild woods. The way is long and dark, but Green is a smart girl. Smart enough to turn down apples offered by kindly old ladies, smart enough to turn down travel advice from helpful wolves, and above all, smart enough to solve a wealth of classic fairy tale problems - not least mend a lovelorn beast's broken heart. Once Upon a Wild Wood is a richly imagined story packed full of familiar fairy tale characters as you've never seen them before.

In Legion of the Dead, Barnaby finds himself embroiled in a plot that includes a legion of zombies raised from the dead. In Dickensian times, people were terrified of being buried alive, and so were left in their coffin with a wire, attached to a bell, running from above the ground, down through the earth and the lid of the coffin, and tied to the little finger of the buried body. Those who found themselves awake in the darkness of their coffin could wiggle their finger and summon help.

Barnaby Grimes is a tick-tock lad, running errands in his city, day and night, and high-stacking around the rooftops in search of new mysteries to solve. A fantastic romp through a Dickensian-style city, with a wonderful new hero in the guise of Barnaby.

The Keepers are a secretive tribe of little people who live in the middle of Whispering Woods, coming out at night to care for the countryside and rewild it when humans (or Ruffins as they know them) are careless with it. Young Keepers Cora and Jax have just finished school and are embarking on a trial, with several friends, to become fully-fledged Keepers. But their first venture out on their own ends in disaster when they become distracted with playing in the Ruffin children's playground instead of concentrating on the task they've been given.

As the third moon rises over Muddle Earth's Perfumed Bog, the twinkling lights are lit on a small houseboat, home to a wizard, Randalf, and his familiar, a very sarcastic budgie called Veronica. Randalf is in trouble: he's stony broke. He's just spent his last silver pipsqueak. There's only one way for a wizard to make cash on Muddle Earth, and that's by doing some magic. Meanwhile, life is about to change beyond recognition for Joe Jefferson, an ordinary schoolboy on ordinary Earth, and his dog, Henry.

Welcome to Absurdia: a strange and wonderful land where nothing is quite what it seems. Trees are birds, umbrellas are trees, and the sky is thick with snoring fish. Join one small boy as he tumbles out of bed into a crazy dreamland of wardrobe monsters, dragons - and amazing adventure. With a story to enchant the youngest reader, as well as music and sound effects that will make you giggle, whatever your age, this is an extraordinary achievement and one to savour.

Ottoline and Mr. Munroe do everything and go everywhere together. That is until the day Mr. Munroe mysteriously disappears, leaving a strange clue written in string.... Armed with her Amateur Roving Collectors' travel pass, Ottoline sets off on a journey over, under, and on top of the sea to find her hairy best friend - and bring him back home.

Meet Ottoline and her hairy, helpful friend, Mr. Munroe. Ottoline is off to the Alice B. Smith School for the Differently Gifted, but she is rather worried that she doesn't have a special gift. Mr. Munroe is more worried about the ghost who is said to haunt the school halls at night. Does Ottoline discover her hidden talent, and can they expose the spook?

Introducing Miss Ottoline Brown, an exceptionally inquisitive mistress of disguise, and her partner in crime, Mr. Munroe. No puzzle is ever too tricky for the two of them to solve.... Ottoline lives in a stylish apartment in Big City with a small, hairy creature called Mr. Munroe. Together they look after the Brown family's eclectic collections - and dabble in a spot of detective work. So they are the first to the scene of the crime when a string of high-society dog-nappings and jewel thefts hits Big City.

Ottoline is back in Ottoline and the Purple Fox, a brand-new adventure from Children's Laureate Chris Riddell. Ottoline and Mr Munroe love puzzles, clues and mysteries. One day they meet an enigmatic purple fox who offers to take them on a nighttime urban safari. The fox shows them all the hidden animals of the city, and Ottoline makes notes on them in her field notebook. Mr Munroe is making notes, too - on the anonymous poems he finds stuck to lampposts on their journey. Who is the secretive poet, and how can he and Ottoline help them mend their broken heart?

If his inventions go wrong, Wendel just throws them away and starts again. So when Clunk, his robot assistant, fills the sock drawer with cups and saucers and makes tea in a Wellington boot, Wendel throws him on the scrap heap and makes himself a new assistant: the Wendelbot. But he gets more than he bargained for, and soon Wendel finds himself on the scrap heap. Can he win back his workshop from the mighty Wendelbot? Let the robot battle commence!

This beautiful collection includes forty-six poems and is divided into sections covering: musings, youth, family, love, imaginings, nature, war and endings – with famous poems, old and new, and a few surprises. Classic verses from William Shakespeare, Lewis Carroll, W. B. Yeats and Christina Rossetti sit alongside poems from Nick Cave, Leonard Cohen, Carol Ann Duffy, Neil Gaiman and Roger McGough to create a truly enriching, wonderful collection.

Lucifer, introduced in Cursed, the first book of the Fallen Angels series, now goes by Lucian and he has a problem. A disturbing problem named Anna Sill. For the past ten years, he's struggled to understand why he has felt compelled to help her. Finally abandoning Anna to her fate, Lucian stubbornly refuses to have anything else to do with the human.

River Hall, the uninhabited house in question, is a place of ghosts and secrets, and it simply cannot keep a tenant. Inherited by the too-young Miss Helena Elmsdale after her father’s death, it falls to her aunt, Miss Susannah Blake, to attend to the house. In order to see that it remains rented out, Miss Blake brings the property to Messrs. Craven and Son for management. The lawyers do their best, but there is something sinister at River Hall, and the tenants cannot seem to leave fast enough, threatening to leave Miss Blake and her orphaned niece in dire financial straits.

A podcast to help power-up your life with all things self-development. Join NLP and mindset coach, hypnotherapist and author of The Fairy Godmother Mindf*ck, Jools Riddell each week as she explores and discusses areas of self development, self empowerment, living in abundance and how to power-up and up level your life, from science and spirituality to wonderful woo-woo, and everything in between. Open up your mind every Monday as she chats to experts in their field as well as sharing her own knowledge and expertise. Subscribe now and never miss an episode

Young Keepers Cora and Jax are trainees who need to prove themselves or risk being sent back to school. Intent on their task of building a hedgehog highway by making holes at the bottom of fences on a new housing estate, they come upon a deer trapped in the foundations of a building site. Their woodland magic isn't strong enough to help the deer escape, but they will not be able to complete their task if they try to get help for the deer.