This series is the "must-read" of the summer. The books' travel-based themes also make them ideal for holiday reading

The Jack Stalwart books have been a great weapon in the bookseller's armoury for hooking reluctant readers. Now re-launched, they are set to reach a much wider audience of young readers who want a piece of the secret-agent action

Ryan excels with description

The Road of Bones is a startling achievement, not least for its refusal to wrap it all up into a neat and tidy happy ending. It will leave its young readers with a great deal to think about. Most children will know of the Holocaust, but few will realise how many perished during Stalin's purges. This alone is a story worth telling. Cleverly though, The Road of Bones also makes its warnings contemporary, timeless even

Beneath its cold white cover a story of magnitude unfolds

All demand to be read in translation of the originals and not sanitized retellings. Here, by examining letters, journals, annotations and posthumously unavailable papers, Zipes found some hitherto untranslated "ironic and macabre fables, humorous anecdotes, stories about the crusades, Norwegian legend, one 'feminist' tale among other things