CHILDREN’S SALLY MORRIS

NEVER FORGET YOU

by Jamila Gavin (Farshore £8.99, 512 pp) Four teenage girls thrown together at boarding school in 1937 are united by the fact that their parents are abroad: Indian princess Noor; shy Polish Jew Vera; melodramatic, neglected Dodo; and narrator Gwen, whose parents live in India.

As Hitler’s fascists rise in Germany, each girl will be tested by her response to the conflict and to the others, as they move from the innocent dreams of adolescence to the brutal reality of adulthood in a violent world.

Based on the true story of Noor Inayat Khan, a British World War II resistance agent in France, this thrilling and deeply moving adventure is woven seamlessly with consummate skill by award-winning Gavin.

A BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO RULING THE GALAXY by David Solomons (Nosy Crow £7.99, 336 pp)

WHEN Niki, the new girl at school, starts to follow Gavin around, he is irritated — then shocked as she asks him to help fix her damaged spaceship.

Niki is a princess on the run across the universe from her evil, intergalactic, all-powerful parents Pam and Derek, who will destroy earth if they find her.

This wonderfully witty story includes space cannibals, an AI unicorn, a rogue bounty-hunter cat and a terrible twist when Pam and Derek take up yoga and open a Netflix account.

Madly inventive and with a message about the importance of family, this is not to be missed.

THE FIRE CATS OF LONDON by Anna Fargher (Macmillan £7.99, 288 pp)

LONDON, 1666. Asta and her brother Ash, two young wildcats captured in the forest after their mother is killed, are taken to the city to be barbarically used to produce lucrative ‘medicine’ sold by a cruel apothecary.

Asta is desperate to escape but Ash believes the lies fed to him by his master’s domestic cat, who says they are safer in captivity. Willing to help them is herbalist Miriam, an animal rescuer — but how? Then the Great Fire breaks out and they risk losing everything in the flames.

Another gripping novel from the author of The umbrella Mouse, this doesn’t pull its punches on cruelty to animals.