Ashleigh Barton – författare

A wise and beautifully written middle-grade novel about finding answers to the big questions in life from popular children''s author Ashleigh Barton.

Ester Star is a germophobe and hypochondriac and she''s convinced she''s going to die. To prepare for her imminent and inevitable demise, Ester keeps a list of all the questions she hopes to have answered in the afterlife - things she knows she''ll never have the answers to during her lifetime. What really happened to the dinosaurs? Just how big is the universe? Are ghosts real? She''s up to eighty-nine questions and counting.

When Ester''s usual after-school sitters announce they are moving away, her mum comes up with an alternative arrangement that turns her world upside down. Every day after school, Ester is to spend her afternoons with Mum at work. At a hospice. Terrified of all the things she might catch at a hospice, Ester is anxious every second she''s there.

But soon she meets Joan, an elderly lady who used to be in the circus. Joan tells Ester she doesn''t believe in the afterlife, but she does have one question she''ll regret never having answered while she''s alive. Why did her sister disappear all those years ago, after they had been so close growing up in the circus together?With the help of Peter, another kid who spends his afternoons at the hospice, and her new next-door neighbour, a tech whizz named Mackenzie, Ester sets out to have Joan''s question answered.

Will Ester realise there''s more to life than worrying about dying?

A beautiful and deeply moving story about friendship, family, hope and the power of the ocean, for middle-grade readers who love a mystery, from popular children''s author Ashleigh Barton.Beatrice Glass - Bea - lives in a tiny fishing village that''s sleepy all year until the summertime, when the tourists flock in and most of the locals leave. But summer is also when Bea''s favourite person in the entire world, her fun and hilarious uncle, Byron, comes to stay.On their last day together the previous summer, Byron had given Bea an intriguing antique book containing a map of Somewhere, a mysterious island off the coast, and promised that next summer they''d sail to Somewhere together for their best adventure yet.That was last year. Now summer has arrived, but Byron hasn''t. And now it looks like he never will.Are the book and Byron''s disappearance linked? Byron has left some clues for Bea - a scavenger hunt of sorts designed to bring her and her new friend, Arabella, together and give Bea one last magical summer. Could Somewhere hold the key to both Bea''s and Arabella''s future?A story of lost and found, of friendship, family, hope and the power of the ocean, for middle-grade readers who love a mystery.''Emotionally and structurally satisfying, its evocative, elegiac tone balanced by tidy prose that keeps the story grounded . . . It also conjures vibes of older classics such as Lucy M. Boston''s Green Knowe series'' BOOKS+PUBLISHING