'Urgum the Axe Man' by Kjartan Poskitt, illustrated by Philip Reeve

The blurb on the back says: "A riotously funny saga packed with barbarians on horseback, bizarre creatures, interfering gods, man-eating plants and a very digusting lavatory. You'll laugh your head off!"

'Skin Deep: Stories That Cut to the Bone' edited by Tony Bradman

Each of the short stories in this book is about racism.

Written by major authors such as Alan Gibbons, the stories are set in many different places - New York, nineteenth century Australia, Israel, India and Brazil. They're all easily read and powerful stories.

'Over a thousand hills I walk with you' by Hanna Jansen

"Based on the true story of Jeanne, an 8-year old girl who survived the Rwandan genocide of 1994, the only member of her family who did. Her her adoptive mother Hanna Jensen retells her story with a clarity and honesty that is at once moving and inspiring. It was one of the world's most recent and bloody periods of history."

Ribbons of Grace by Maxine Alterio

A good read if especially if you are looking for something from a different cultural perspective for NCEA. Ming Yuet travels from China to the goldfields of Otago. In the nineteenth century Chinese were openly discriminated against and worse. So, when Ming Yuet and Conran (from Scotland's Orkney Islands) fall in love, the affair must be kept very secret.

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

This is a children's book first published in 1911, so it's not for everyone but it really is a good story. Spoilt and neglected Mary is orphaned and sent from India to live with her uncle in a mansion on the wild Yorkshire moors.

She is miserable - disliked by everyone, lonely and alone.

The mansion is vast and secretive. Someone cries in the night, and there's a garden she must never go in. But slowly, Mary adjusts and then she meets Dickon and Colin and together they pull off a miracle.

Uglies by Scott Westerfeld

Would you like to look like a supermodel? No matter what you did, you'd always look stunning. At 16, in Tally's world, everyone has an operation which turns them from an Ugly into a Pretty and Pretties have it easy - parties, clothes and fun. Sounds good, until Tally meets Shay and Shay doesn't want a surgically enhanced face and body. Shay is happy as she is and wants to run away.

But running away puts Tally into a dreadful situation and she discovers life in the Pretty world isn't quite as charmed as she imagined.

This is the first book in a trilogy.

My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell

When he was ten Gerald Durrell went with his mother, brothers and sister to live on the Greek island of Corfu. Later in life, Gerald was to become a famous collector of animals and an early conservationist. He had his own zoo on Jersey. He wrote this book to tell about how he discovered the wild life of Corfu, but as he says, he " made the grave mistake of introducing his family into the book, and then having got themselves on paper, they proceeded to establish themselves and invite various friends to share the chapters." What follows is a very funny book.

The Devil's Breath by David Gilman

It's night and you are out running, training for a triathlon, when you hear a click, a strange metallic click. Luckily, Max Gordon recognises the sound - otherwise he'd be dead. In next to no time, Max not only evades the assasin's bullet but he discovers his father is missing believed dead.

Thus begins a story of non-stop action as Max goes to search for his father and to discover the secret his father had discovered. This journey takes him to Namibia in Africa where he meets the legendary Bushmen.

First Crossing ed. Donald R Gallo

Each year thousands of families move to the United States. Some arrive as refugees, forced to leave their home countries; others move for a better life.

Being a teenager is hard enough without having to leave your friends and everything you know to start life anew in a land where you may not even speak the language.

The authors of the stories in this book come from a huge variety of backgrounds. All the stories are fiction but they have their basis in real-life events.

Lessons to learn, by Natasha Judd

A novel about choices. After a tragedy, Charlotte leaves New Zealand to teach in Korea. Her only previous experience has been teaching Sunday School. Korea brings huge cultural challenges and as well, Charlotte has to deal with issues in her past.

'Singing for Mrs Pettigrew: a storyteller's journey' by Michael Morpurgo

How do you become a writer? Where do you get your inspiration? In this book Michael Morpurgo explains with stories written through, and about, his life.

Unheard Voices ed. Malorie Blackman

Stories and poems collected together by Malorie Blackman to mark the 200th anniversary of British legislation which banned the slave trade.

There are real accounts as well as extracts from books written by authors such as Benjamin Zephaniah, Gary Paulsen and Malorie Blackman herself.

Double or die by Charlie Higson

This is the third book in the Young Bond series, which tell about the adventures of the young James Bond at school in the 1930s. Not that he spends much time at school - you can't when one of your masters has gone missing and the only clue is a mysterious letter. If you have ever wanted to know more about how to solve cryptic crosswords, then this book gives you a lot of information. Probably, crosswords aren't your thing. In which case, 'Double or Die' is action from beginning to end and you'll really enjoy it.

Taking off by Janice Marriott

Life isn't always fun; sometimes rotten things happen, and then how do you cope? For Alana it's the possibility of going blind. For Tommy it's having no father and a mother who's too spaced out to care. And for Amira it is the struggle to make a new life in a land where you don't even speak the language.

Janice Marriott sets her story in an isolated New Zealand community on an estuary. There's lots of information about birds and flying - information which in the end becomes a matter of life and death.

Tunnels by Roderick Gordon and Brian Williams

Will Burroughs and his father have one thing in common - they like digging! Usually their digs and tunnels turn up bits and pieces of junk like bottles or broken tools but this time they come across something else entirely. And then Will's father disappears. Not only that, but their tunnels do too.

What's happening and why? Their search puts them in deadly danger.

What I Was by Meg Rosoff

A story about first love. He's been kicked out of two boarding schools and he's now at St Oswald's - terrible food, bullying and tired, tyranical masters.

Finn, mysterious, and totally self-sufficient, living alone in a little hut on the Sussex coast is everything he would like to be. Or is he?