Rhiannon Lassiter

Books about teenagers in space.

• Rites of Passage by Alexei Panshin
  In 2198, one hundred and fifty years after the desperate wars that destroyed an overpopulated Earth, Mia Havero’s Ship is a small closed society. It tests its children by casting them out to live or die in a month of Trial in the hostile wilds of a colony world.
• Earth Girl by Janet Edwards
  2788. Only the handicapped live on Earth. While everyone else portals between worlds, 18-year-old Jarra is among the one in a thousand people born with an immune system that cannot survive on other planets.
• Earthseed by Pamela Sargent
  Ship hurtles through space. Deep within its core, it carries the seed of humankind. Launched by the people of a dying Earth over a century ago, its mission is to find a habitable world for the children – fifteen-year-old Zoheret and her shipmates – whom it has created from its genetic banks.
• The Dancing Meteorite by Anne Mason
  On her space station Kira Warden is the only earthbound teenager – with the same emotions as humans had thousands of years ago. Her only friend is an alien teenager living in a sealed environment on the station whose own home planet has been destroyed.
• Young Miles by Lois McMaster Bujold
  When Miles Vorkorsigan washes out of the Barrayaran Military Academy for being overly fragile he thinks his life is over but then Miles’s natural (if unorthodox) leadership qualities lead to a series of adventures.
• This Place Has No Atmosphere by Paula Danziger
  When Aurora’s parents decide to move to the Moon she doesn’t want to say goodbye to all the places and people she loves.
• Paradises Lost by Ursula Le Guin
  A generation ship is half way through its voyage from Earth to a new planet.
• Deepwater Black by Ken Catran
  In a desperate attempt before the end, all humanity’s resources are dedicated to a crash program to produce a deep space ark, capable of seeding humanity on a new world. The ship is crewed by six clones; teenage versions of people who achieved great works during the ark project and equipped with the memories of their donors.
• The Rowan by Anne McCaffrey
  The story of a young orphan who is discovered to have telepathic talents when her community is wiped out in a mudslide.
• Earthsearch by James Follett
  Some years before the story opens, the huge Earth starship Challenger, on a mission to find Earth-like planets for colonization, encountered a meteoroid shower that killed all of the adult crew and seriously damaged the ship. The only human survivors were four babies – two boys, Telson and Darv, and two girls, Sharna and Astra. The four have been raised from childhood by androids and tutored by two disembodied voices called Angel One and Angel Two. Most of the humans believe the voices are real angels, but Darv is more suspicious and believes they are actually computers.

Celebrating Halloween, here’s a list of spooky books for readers of various ages, to read under the covers with the lights turned up high. These are listed in rough order of the age range that I’d recommend these for, from juniors to middle grade, YA and adult.

• Which Witch? by Eva ibbotson
  Arriman the Awful, feared Wizard of the North, has decided to marry. But his wife must be a wicked witch skilled in black magic. Belladonna desperately wants to be a wicked enchantress but her magic is hopelessly white. Terrence Mugg is an unattractive orphan with a worm for a pet. This lighthearted read is intended for junior shut has enough humour to keep adult readers engaged as well.
• The Haunting of Cassie Palmer by Vivien Alcock
  Cassie is the seventh child of a seventh child and her medium mother expects supernatural powers from her. When Cassie experimentally tries to raise a spirit she accidentally raised the wrong one: a sinister man named Deverill.
• Marianne Dreams by Catherine Storr
  This was read to me when I was eight by by class teacher. Perhaps a bit spooky for some eight-year-olds but I loved it. Whatever Marianne draws with a magic pencil she visits in her dreams: a house, a boy, food and toys. But when, in fit of temper, she draws eyes on the stones surrounding the house, her dreams enter a new and terrifying phase.
• Why Weeps the Brogan? by Hugh Scott
  Wed 4 Years 81 days from hostilities… so reads the clock in Central Hall. For Saxon and Gilbert, though, it is just another day in their ritualized indoor existence. Together they visit the Irradiated Food Store, guarding against spiders. Among the dusty display cases, however, a far more disturbing creature moves. What is the Brogan… and why does it weep? This book works a dark and mysterious way to a dark and devastating conclusion.
• The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. Le Guin
  I fell in love this book when I was ten and dressed in black and called myself “Arha the Eaten One”. Arha is a child priestess serving the Nameless Ones in tombs under the earth. When a wizard arrives in the catacombs she confronts everything she had learned about herself, the gods and magic. This is an Earthsea novel but it stands alone.
• The Owl Service by Alan Garner
  Alison and her brother Roger are spending their summer holidays in Wales. While ill in bed Alison hears noises from the attic above. Gwyn, a local boy, is sent to investigate and discovers a set of plates with a complex floral design around the edge of each piece. Alison discovers that when she traces the design and cuts it out, it can be folded into the shape of an owl. But each new paper owl disappears and so does the design from the plates. This novel builds the tension slowly but surely and its mystery has stayed with me since I first read it as a young preteen.
• The Time of the Ghost by Diana Wynne Jones
  The ghost knows she is one of four sisters, but which one? She also knows there’s been an accident. As she struggles to find her identity, she becomes aware of a malevolent force stirring around her. Something terrible is about to happen. One of the sisters will die – unless the ghost can use the future to reshape the past. But how can she warn them, when they don’t even know she exists? This is the Diana Wynne Jones book based the most closely on the author’s own peculiar family and is full of haunted echoes of her own past.
• Transformations by Anne Halam
  This is the second book of a trilogy but it stands alone. Sirato, a child of a mining family, is endlessly criticised by her strict family. Her older teenage brother Holm is indulged in all sorts of whims. Then Zanne of Garth, a Covenanter known for her work to end the poisoned machines of the past, arrives in Minith she begins to uncover a twisted secret beneath the town’s stony exterior.
• Del Del by Victor Kelleher
  This terrifying story of a child’s personality unravelling, told by his older sister, is one of the most sinister YA novels I have read.
• Fade by Robert Cormier
  A story about a power of invisibility inherited through the generations and the malign effects it has on its possessors.

Special offer! Halloween 2014: Little Witches Bewitched, Rhiannon Lassiter’s novel for juniors is discounted by 80% on Kindle in the UK and the US. From 27 October to 3 November this set of short stories for junior and middle grade readers is discounted to £0.99 in the UK and $1.99 in the US.

“Small, but brave.” – Ann Giles, The Book Witch

“These stories are ideal for children who love dressing up, imagining curious castles and dreaming up magical shops.” – KM Lockwood, Serendipity Reviews

In the first story, Little Witches and the Trick-or-Treat-Trick, the heroines meet each other for the first time on Halloween. Dulcie’s au pair is a fashion student who has dressed her up as a modern witch – “occult casual” she calls it. Verity has lost the battle with her sisters for first choice from the dressing up box and ended up with pirate boots and a witches hat and broom. While out trick-or-treating they accidentally annoy a mysterious old woman who casts a spell on them Dulcie and Verity gain magic powers for real. In Little Witches and the Wandering Shop they work together to find a way to reverse the spell.

There are three more Little Witches stories in this collection. Little Witches and the Family Ghost is a ghost story which takes place in Dulcie’s grandfather’s stately home. Little Witches and the Cat Burglar is a crime story in which they meet a strange black cat. Little Witches Back in Time is a time-travel adventure in which they meet Shakespeare.

For more about the book visit the Little Witches book page.

We Were Liars is the best book I’ve read this year. I have been recommending it all this week and it’s also made me think about how many books I enjoy are mysteries. In its honour, here are ten recommended mystery novels.

• We Were Liars by E Lockhart
  Could be read as YA or an adult novel. The heroine knows something terrible has happened but can’t grasp what or why, the answer must lie in at the summer vacation home where she lost her memory two summers ago.
• Before I Go To Sleep by SJ Watson
  Intensely creepy thriller about a women with a rare form of amnesia which has erased her short term memory and she has to rebuild her identity each day, but can she trust what she learns?
• The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
  Margaret goes visits bestselling author Vida Winter, intrigued by her collection of twelve stories confusing named ‘Thirteen Tales of Change and Desperation’. The thirteenth tale is wrapped around the mystery of Vida’s own life and the disturbed twins Emmeline and Adeline March. Vida must be one of the twins to know their family secrets so well – but which one? Is she protecting someone else or her own deeds.
• Asta’s Book by Barbara Vine
  This is one of my favourite Barbara Vine novels. Asta’s book is a diary bequeathed ultimately to Asta’s granddaughter Ann after the death if her aunt Swanny. The diary is well known by that stage, a bestseller translated into multiple languages, but could it hold the key to a mysterious murder and a lost child? As Ann unravels the mystery of the diary and the murder together, she learns surprising and uncomfortable facts about herself and her family.
• Dead Famous by Ben Elton
  Ben Elton is very clever in the way he weaves his plots. In this novel, set on the stage of a Big Brother style reality TV show, you don’t even know who has been killed until a third of the way through the book – and there remain the mysteries of how a murder could have been committed in full view of the public and the identity of the killer.
• Sleeping Murder by Agatha Christie
  The beginning of this novel is one of the most sinister and mysterious I’ve read. At doesn’t seem like a detective story but a supernatural one and that mood is retained throughout the novel.
• The Dark Room by Minette Walters
  Heiress Jane “Jinx” Kingsley wakes up from a coma after what appears to be a suicide attempt. She’s been jilted by her fiancé, who has since disappeared together with Jinx’s best friend Meg. With the help of Dr Alan Protheroe of the Nightingale Clinic she tries to recover the truth from her shattered memories and night time terrors.
• The Time Travellers Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
  This narrative is told in the sequence that makes sense for parts – but not all- of the story. Throughout it is a sense of lurking danger and dread. Henry’s time travel leaves him so very vulnerable and we know that a tragedy is coming while the details remain obscure.
• The Secret History by Donna Tart
  Long before The Goldfinch we all knew Donna Tart for this novel. Richard arrives at Hampden College, a poor Californian student who is quickly seduced by the charismatic classics students and their Professor. Desperate to be a part of the group, he misses the signs that will lead to more than one a brutal murder.
• The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
  Laura Chase is dead and her one novel ‘The Blind Assassin’ has a huge cult following. Only her sister Iris knows what really happened when she and Laura were children and how the novel came to be.

Earlier this year I read Brideshead Revisited for the first time and to be honest, I was disappointed. I’d heard it was a classic story about someone falling in love with a family. Perhaps the problem was that I didn’t fall in love with the characters or find them fascinating at all. Here are some recommended books which made fall in love with the fascinating family portrayed.

• The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford
  Based on Mitford’s own eccentric upbringing and full of her quick wit and laconic style. After reading this I read everything Mitford I could get my hands on.
• The Camomile Lawn by Mary Wesley
  Set during the Second World War, this follows the stories of five cousins who we meet on holiday at their aunt and uncle’s house, known for its camomile lawn, about to take part in ‘The Terror Run’, a night time race along a cliff path. Oliver, Calypso, Polly, Walter and Sophy and their friends and relations are followed through the course of the war as they grow in unexpected directions.
• Brother of the More Famous Jack by Barbara Trapido
  The first of a multi branching narrative but it entirely stands alone. Katherine is introduced by her Professor Jacob Goldman to his family and falls for the beautiful slim and serious Roger with an embroidered butterfly on the back pocket of his jeans. But the whole family fascinates Katherine and she becomes over invested in their lives and struggles to find her own independent self.
• A Surfeit of Lampreys by Ngaio Marsh
  An Inspector Alleyn detective story but one in which Alleyen falls into the background behind the brilliant and eccentric Lampreys who treat murder like a parlour game and admit openly how ridiculous they are.
• I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
  An artistic family rents a dilapidated castle and when new neighbours move, Cassandra’s sister Rose is ready to fall in love with the eligible older son. As Cassandra narrates the budding romance she tries to ignore her own worries. But is Rose really in love or just pretending because she wants what love will bring her.
• The Tricksters by Margaret Mahy
  Ariadne “Harry” Hamilton is quiet and owlish, a quiet seventeen-year-old, overshadowed by glamourous older sister Christabel. Christmas in New Zeland is a beach holiday for the family at Carnivale’s Hide: one with unexpected guests, three of whom resemble characters from Harry’s novel. This magical realist novel is firmly rooted in the story of family relationships.
• Wise Children by Angela Carter
  The dancing Chance sisters are illegitimate children of the theatrical royalty Hazard family. The song-and-dance girls tap dance their way through the family’s fortunes and disasters.
• The Time of the Ghost by Diana Wynne Jones
  This is the one of Diana’s novels based the most closely on her wn eccentric family. But which of the four girls we meet is the ghost? Unravelling the mystery is essential to surving their childhood.
• Ballet Shoes by Noël Streatfeild
  The three adopted Fossil sisters have to train for the stage in order to make a living and vow to revive the family fortunes. Pauline is an actress and Posy is a dancer’s daughter but Petrova the middle sister only just tolerates her dancing for the sake of the family.
• Out of the Ordinary by Annie Dalton
  Molly writes a mock advert for ‘Quests Undertaken’ and finds herself and the family foster children drawn into the magical mystery of a very strange child.