The Bloodstone Bird

One of The Independent’s 50 best winter reads for 2009/2010.

Sash hates school, with its menacing teachers and stuck-up students. His father, Max, is too busy to notice, lost in his mysterious research. Everything changes when Sash finds a riddle in Max’s study, revealing a quest for a magical bird. Fame awaits its captor, and Sash decides to track it down. Verity, his sworn enemy, insists on helping… whether he likes it or not. But beneath the suns of a dazzling new world, dangerous forces are also stalking the bird. What must Sash and Verity risk for the greatest prize of all? Friendship? Loyalty? Their lives?