"The daughter of an artist and a scientist, and your own interesting self, Millie. What more could you need?" But Millie isn't sure that Tom, her mum's boyfriend, is right about that. A new town, a school project due, an enemy called Tayla, a boy with the initials RH and Tom himself.... It's all too much even for an interesting girl like Millie. But as her father says, change is needed, and sometimes it's the biggest changes that make us who we are. Millie and the Night Heron is a gentle, lyrical and moving tale from award-winning author Catherine Bateson which reminds us all to stop and remember the important things in life.

A classically heartwarming Catherine Bateson story, reissued with a stunning new Vintage Classics cover.Ruby's mum is having a baby, but why does she need one of those when she's already got a Ruby?To make matters worse, her best friend Sarah has just found another, BETTER friend. It seems like everyone is abandoning her. But when Ruby meets the mysterious Magda, who gives her a very special gift that might, just MIGHT, even be a bit magical, everything begins to change. This delightful story from the multi-award-winning author of BEING BEE and RAIN MAY AND CAPTAIN DANIEL will fill the young reader with wonder, hope and amazing possibilities.

A classically heartwarming Catherine Bateson story, reissued with a stunning new coverFor Magenta McPhee, life is good. It would be almost perfect if she could sort out her dad, who quite possibly needs saving - from himself.Desperate times call for desperate measures, even if those measures involve identity fraud on a dating site, and replying, as your father, to emails he doesn't even know he's been getting.But when pretending to be someone else is taking you away from your life's purpose - writing the next great fantasy novel - things might have gone too far.In MAGENTA MCPHEE, Catherine Bateson has once again created a cast of delightfully real characters who will stay in the reader's memory long after the last page is turned.

“And bigger than all of that, I knew that sometimes you had to do the impossible like eat oysters or go shopping even when you could hardly breathe because that is what people did when they truly loved one another and it had nothing to do with freckles or anklebones or lipstick.” Dave is dying. Chrissie, Mum, Nan and Badger are going to be left behind. Because sometimes life is like that. Painted love letters … a story of the heart.

Following on from The Wish Pony, Catherine Bateson's new novel returns to the world of magic realism to chart the stormy waters of a child's grief.When grief strikes, you need an ally. For Mimi, that ally is Ableth, the wildly disobedient blue slave. He comes, he goes, he says and does whatever he likes, but he's always there when Mimi needs him most, offering his own brand of crooked wisdom. Ableth says, 'You need to learn to look under the surface of things. Look at water. It's just a great expanse of blue with little wavelets and riffs of foam. But underneath the surface are whole worlds of wonder. There are treasures and wrecks and bones . . .' But it's hard to look beneath the surface when your Mum is shipwrecked by despair, and you're the only one left to keep things afloat. There's a bric-a-brac shop to run, your first Christmas without a dad, and quite possibly a fugitive taking refuge in your back shed.This warm, captivating story celebrates the odd families we make,...

What do you wear to Paris? Ami and I discussed it for hours but I still couldn't think of anything suitable. Ami said a trench coat with nothing underneath but your best underwear. That was only if some boy was meeting you at the airport, I said.Eighteen-year-old Lisette has just arrived in Paris (France!) - the city of haute couture and all things stylish - to practise her French and see great works of art. Her clairvoyant landlady Madame Christophe forces her to attend language lessons with a bunch of international students but soon Lise discovers she's more interested in studying boys than art or verbs ...When the undeniably hot Anders jogs into her life it feels too good to be true. Things get even more complicated when she is pursued by Hugo, a charming English antiques dealer.Can she take a chance and follow her own dreams? How far into the future can Madame Christophe see? And could Lise really be falling in love - in Paris?

Rain May and her mum escape their old inner-city life for a dream house in the country. But there are more than a few suprises in store - like discovering a platypus or the fun of fridge poetry and phenomenally bright eleven-year-old, Captain Daniel, who lives next door. Together these unlikely friends adventure where no one has gone before.