Childrens Church

In 1962, Don and Carol Richardson risked their lives to share the gospel with the Sawi people of New Guinea. Peace Child tells their unforgettable story of living among these headhunters and cannibals who valued treachery through fattening victims with friendship before the slaughter. God gave Don and Carol the key to the Sawi hearts via a redemptive analogy from their own mythology.

Stephen Smith is the boy who did not exist. Born out of wedlock in the early 1960s, Steve's parents - both devout Catholics - had felt so 'shamed' by their son's illegitimate birth that they hid him away from the world by locking him in the cellar...for 13 years. Apart from a few admissions to hospital as a result of his 'imprisonment', Steve remained in the coal cellar of the family home where he was deprived of daylight, his childhood, school and human contact until he'd reached his teenage years.

Growing up in 19th-century London, England, Ada is curious about absolutely everything. She is obsessed with machines and with creatures that fly. She even designs her own flying laboratory! According to her mother, Ada is a bit too wild, so she encourages Ada to study math. At first, Ada thinks: bleh! Who can get excited about a subject without pictures? But she soon falls in love with it. One day, she encounters a mysterious machine, and from that moment forward, Ada imagines a future full of possibility - one that will eventually inspire the digital age nearly 200 years later.

1948, Berlin. World War II has ended and there is supposed to be peace; but Russian troops have closed all access to the city. Roads, railway lines and waterways are blocked and two million people are trapped, relying on airlifts of food, water and medicine to survive. The sharp eyes of the Russian state police watch everything. Anna and Ingrid are both searching for answers - and revenge - in the messy aftermath of war. Both are living in the shadows of a city where the line between right and wrong has become dangerously blurred. But they cannot give up in the search for a lost child.

From before the creation of our world, God intended to have a people to love forever, enjoying their company as they enjoyed His. Jesus told his disciples that he would build this church, and nothing could destroy it (Matthew 16:18). God has kept his promise. For two thousand years, Christ has continued to preserve His church even when destruction looked likely. Simonetta’s book starts after the death of Jesus’s 12 apostles and continues to today: it’s a fascinating story that helps you know the God who planned it and who is keeping His church for an even more exciting future.

Since its publication, Quidditch Through the Ages has been one of the most popular books in the Hogwarts library. Read by Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, and many more, it is the essential guide to the wizarding world's favourite game.

Jules Verne’s classic science fiction fantasy carries its hero - Professor Aronnax of the Museum of Paris - on a thrilling and dangerous journey far below the waves to see what creatures live in the ocean’s depths. In the process, Verne imagined a vessel that had not yet been invented: the submarine.

Junko is bad at athletics. Really bad. Other students laugh because they think she is small and weak. Then her teacher takes the class on a trip to a mountain. It’s bigger than any Junko’s ever seen, but she is determined to make it to the top. Ganbatte, her teacher tells her. Do your best. After that first trip, Junko becomes a mountaineer in body and spirit. She climbs snowy mountains, rocky mountains and even faraway mountains outside of her home country of Japan.

No nation, institution, empire, or dynasty has helped shape the world more than the Catholic Church. Armies have marched upon one another. Kings have risen and fallen. Ideological and political movements have taken hold of entire continents. Diseases and plagues have ravished millions. And through it all, Holy Mother Church has endured, standing as the one source of light in a world so often covered by shadows. In this thrilling narrative, Phillip Campbell takes children on a journey through Church history.

Wangari lives in the lush, green land of rural Kenya, where the soil is perfect for planting, the trees tower into the sky and the streams are full of mysterious creatures. All day, she plays beneath her favourite fig tree, and at night, she gathers around the fire with her family to listen to her mother's stories. Then Wangari grows up and goes away to school, and things start changing at home. Farmers chop down the trees. Landslides bury the stream. The soil becomes overworked and dry, and nothing will grow. People go hungry.

In the 1980s, Erika Bornman’s family join, and ultimately move to, KwaSizabantu, a Christian mission based in KwaZulu-Natal, which is touted as a nirvana, founded on egalitarian values. But something sinister lurks beneath ‘the place where people are helped’. Life at KwaSizabantu is hard. Christianity is used to justify harsh punishments, and congregants are forced to repent for their sins. Threats of physical violence ensure adherence to stringent rules. Parents are pitted against children. Friendships are discouraged.

When Rachel marries dark, handsome David, everything seems to fall into place. Swept from single life in London to the beautiful Carnhallow House in Cornwall, she gains wealth, love and a stepson, Jamie. But then Jamie makes a chilling prediction, and Rachel's perfect life begins to unravel. Haunted by the spectre of David's late wife - Jamie's real mother - Rachel finds herself drawn to the deserted mines where she plunged to her death three years prior.

Medalon has surrendered to foreign invaders, Tarja is once more an outcast, the Defenders have scattered…and their only hope is Damin Wolfblade. But Damin has his own problems - the High Prince is dead, so Damin must lift the siege on the Hythrun capital and defeat a usurper before he can come to Medalon's aid. For R'shiel, time is running out. She must find a way to bring peace to the divided southern nations, to free Medalon from Karien occupation, and to find the strength to put an end to Loclon.

In 2009, the Good News Club came to the public elementary school where journalist Katherine Stewart sent her children. The Club, which is sponsored by the Child Evangelism Fellowship, bills itself as an after-school program of "Bible study." But Stewart soon discovered that the Club's real mission is to convert children to fundamentalist Christianity and encourage them to proselytize to their "unchurched" peers, all the while promoting the natural but false impression among the children that its activities are endorsed by the school.

While her milliner mother Rosamund is abroad in Paris, 12-year-old Vinnie Fyfe is left behind in Brighton. She finds comfort in eccentric Aunt Bets, her new friend Temitayo and the Brighton Aquarium—where the arrival of a giant octopus will change her life forever. At first terrified, then fascinated, Vinnie begins to produce drawings of the incredible creature, and is sure that a bond is developing between them. But meanwhile, there is a dark and dangerous mystery afoot—involving Rosamund's real reasons for disappearing so suddenly.

Imogen and Marie return through the door in the tree to a whole new Yaroslav. Miro is king but hates it. Anneshka is no longer queen...and hates it. When Anneshka hears a prophecy that she will rule the Greatest Kingdom, she seizes Marie, believing her to be key to fulfilling it, and heads over the mountains. Imogen and Miro chase after them in hot pursuit. But what they find in the lands beyond will change everything again, and see them facing dangers they could never have imagined, both human and otherwise.

The small country of Medalon lies between the vast nation of Karien in the north and the nations of Fardohnya and Hythria in the south. For centuries the Medalonians co-existed peacefully with the Harshini, a magical race that abhors killing. But now they are gone and in their place the Sisters of the Blade rule Medalon from the Citadel. An elite army of Defenders enforces the Sisterhood's oppressive rule. The Harshini and their demons are believed to be extinct and Medalon has an uneasy peace with its northern and southern neighbours.

Sarah is the first person in her family who wasn’t born into slavery in Delta, Louisiana. But being free doesn’t mean that Sarah doesn’t have to work. She cooks, she cleans, she picks cotton, she does laundry and she babysits. And when she works, she wraps up her hair. One day, Sarah’s hair starts to fall out! It’s itchy, crunchy, patchy and won’t grow. Instead of giving up, Sarah searches for the right products. And then she invents something better than any shampoo or hair oil she’s used before.

Imogen should be nice to her little sister Marie. She should be nice to her mum’s boyfriend, too. And she certainly shouldn’t follow a strange silver moth through a door in a tree. But then...who does what they’re told. Followed by Marie, Imogen finds herself falling into a magical kingdom where the two sisters are swept up in a thrilling race against time - helped by the spoiled prince of the kingdom, a dancing bear, a very grumpy hunter...and even the stars above them.

In Medalon, Book One of the Hythrun Chronicles, Tarja Tenragen and his half-sister R'shiel were forced to lead a rebellion against their power hungry mother, who ruled Medalon as the First Sister of the Blade. But their mother's defeat came at great cost: not only does it leave Medalon vulnerable to invasion, R'shiel is mortally wounded. As Treason Keep begins, R'shiel is on the brink of death. Her only hope is the healing powers of the Harshini - magical beings long thought extinct. Even they will be hard-pressed to save the Demon Child of prophecy...