Cuckoo Song by Frances Hardinge

How do I persuade you to read this book? How can I convince you of the riches within? Teresa is the fragile, troubled child. Her family is denying the loss of her brother in the trenches of Northern France. But there is an undoing of our narrator that is quite shocking and we discover the malevolent scissors, the precious hunger, the proximity of dolls, the obdurate sister, the insidious tailor, the deciduous hair, the cobwebbed tears, the deliquescent child, the irresolute music, the upside down besiders, the perilous pact, the capricious architect, the dexterous shrike, the unexpected ally, the unrepentant motorcyclist, the midsummer-winter, the soul like clay, the salt in the wound, the unfinished tomb and the tainted promise. Cuckoo Song is 'un chanson triste' and our endangered 'actress in a leading role' must discover if she can break and change and dance to the Music of Time.

By the author of A Face Like Glass, Twilight Robbery, Gullstruck Island

For a well-read 11+

More toothsome faeries and their kind grace the pages of The Various, the 13 Treasures, The Stones are Hatching, Spiggott's Quest, Fire Spell, The Folk Keeper, Poison and the books of Holly Black