Wanted - One Body! ¦ Forbidden Game ¦ Runaway Train

These three titles by well-known authors are published in the 'Surfers' series, which provides illustrated, large print, fast and excitement-filled yarns for challenged readers in the middle age groups. Wanted - One Body! is a lively and comic story about two brothers amateur sleuthing a murder which they witnessed, but for which there seems to be no body. Their cunning and perseverance pays off, but not without considerable danger. Forbidden Game takes Sickle Cell Anaemia into the frame. An outcast lad exerts his right to be normal on a school expedition and proves just how far he is from being the wimp that everyone supposes. A lot rings far-fetched here but the generated excitement makes up for it. Runaway Train takes the prize for improbability. A boy escaping by train from his mum's new husband, gets tangled up with a resourceful hardnut family springing their cherished felon from custody and a blind girl with a very useful mobile phone. Again it is the pace that carries it along to its satisfactorily moral climax.

My testers have enjoyed these books, especially the boys for whom they seem to be directed, so they are worth stocking to keep youngsters turning the pages.