Ratchet The Reluctant Witch

FANTASY & MAGICAL REALISM (CHILDREN'S / TEENAGE). Be careful what you wish for. Fourteen-year-old Rachel Hollingsworth ('that's Ratchet, you eejit') is sick of living in foster care. Desperate for her independence, she runs away. But unaware she's a witch, she accidentally travels back in time to the notorious Essex witch trials, along with her social worker-witch mentor Bryony and Oscar the cat. They all face execution, but their powers are failing and tim is running out. They manage to escape, but to Old Istanbul. Ratchet, now a skilled fortune teller, is invited to the Palace to read the Sultan's wife's future. But the Sultana has something else in mind. She holds Ratchet's friends hostage, until she does 'one small favour'. With her friends' lives in the balance, Ratchet has to make the most difficult decisions of her life, and carry them out - all on her own. Ages 9+

Willa is just an ordinary non-magical girl, living in the Wild - a city squished between two warring witch covens. She spends her days dodging wayward spells - from raining frogs to dancing chickens - all because of the witch war! No wonder she hates witches. But one day she's not ordinary at all. She discovers she does, indeed, have magic and she must choose between the two witch covens or she'll explode! And her attempts to control her magic are interrupted by a rogue witch, who begins nefarious spells against the Ordinary Folk. What does the witch want and what does it have to do with Willa?

Brenna is the daughter of the most powerful witch in the world. Brenna's mother loves her daughter deeply and agrees to let Brenna choose whether she wants to live her life as an immortal witch, or a human. Unforeseen events push Brenna to choose much earlier than she would have liked. Kidnapped by a demon and narrowly escaping an immortal life as his slave, Brenna decides being a witch with the ability to protect herself is much better than eternal torment and servitude. Between settling on her fate, the kidnapping and finally being rescued by a charming wolf, Brenna has a trifecta of troubles she was not prepared for.

A young adult, historical fantasy, time-slip novel about an emotionally wounded, fourteen-year-old foster girl who runs away not knowing she's a witch. She accidentally time travels to the 1645 English Essex Witch Trials, and to 1645 Istanbul/Constantinople. Real English and Turkish historic figures are included. There is a talking cat.

TWO POWERFUL WITCHES. TWO POWERFUL NOVELLAS IN ONE BOOK SEE ME Fiona Morrissey learned from an early age not to trust her magical powers and certainly not to trust the spirits her "gifts" allowed her to see. Mama always said, "Spirits may act like they are giving you something, but they will take from you a hundredfold anything they give you. Spirits always want something and are not to be trusted." Being a good girl, Fiona followed her mother's advice and for years steered clear of spirits and magic. That is until the spirit of gorgeous John Callahan, Fiona's ex-boyfriend and the only man she ever truly loved, decided to camp outside her door. Now Fiona must decide, can she trust the spirit of her beloved boyfriend or was John like all the other selfish and dangerous spirits her mother warned her about? FOLLOW ME DNA is destiny. Or is it? Nell Donahue was born an echo witch -- a weak witch with just enough magic in her to read the tea leaves of bored suburban housewives. Nell's spent her life envying her more gifted sister and chasing magical powers she could never attain until an unexpected trip to hell increased Nell's abilities ten-fold. Now Nell has more powers than she ever dreamed of. She's also being haunted by the ghost of a slain college student, threatened by a pack of semi-human demon-worshipping ghouls and harassed by a brawny detective who's awakened something in unlucky-in- love Nell that she'd much prefer remained dormant. Too late to return to her status as an echo witch, Nell must learn to harness her enhanced powers before she loses everything, including her heart.

Love under trying circumstances One night out of the blue, Ratchet Clark's ill-natured mother tells her that Ratchet will be leaving their Pensacola apartment momentarily to take the train up north. There she will spend the summer with her aged relatives Penpen and Tilly, inseparable twins who couldn't look more different from each other. Staying at their secluded house, Ratchet is treated to a passel of strange family history and local lore, along with heaps of generosity and care that she has never experienced before. Also, Penpen has recently espoused a new philosophy – whatever shows up on your doorstep you have to let in. Through thick wilderness, down forgotten, bear-ridden roads, come a variety of characters, drawn to Penpen and Tilly's open door. It is with vast reservations that the cautious Tilly allows these unwelcome guests in. But it turns out that unwelcome guests may bring the greatest gifts. By turns dark and humorous, Polly Horvath offers adolescent readers enough quirky characters and outrageous situations to leave them reeling! The Canning Season is the winner of the 2003 National Book Award for Young People's Literature.

Move over Diary of a Wimpy Kid—there's a new journal in town and it belongs to Ratchet. "A book that is full of surprises...Triumphant enough to make readers cheer; touching enough to make them cry." —Kirkus, STARRED Review If only getting a new life were as easy as getting a new notebook. But it's not. It's the first day of school for all the kids in the neighborhood. But not for me. I'm homeschooled. That means nothing new. No new book bag, no new clothes, and no new friends. The best I've got is this notebook. I'm supposed to use it for my writing assignments, but my dad never checks. Here's what I'm really going to use it for: Ratchet's Top Secret Plan Turn my old, recycled, freakish, friendless life into something shiny and new. This Florida State Book Award gold medal winner is a heartfelt story about an unconventional girl's quest to make a friend, save a park, and find her own definition of normal.

Survival Strategy #50: If You Can, Be Brave It's easy to be brave when your eight-year-old sister, Billie, looks up to you as her protector. Twelve-year-old Liberty feels it's her job to look after Billie once they are sent to live with their father, whom they haven't seen since they were very young. Dad is unpredictable on his best days, but when he abandons the girls at a gas station in the middle of nowhere, Liberty's courage is truly put to the test. As she and Billie struggle to make it home on their own, they encounter a cast of both helpful and not-so-helpful characters, including a man with caterpillar eyebrows, a lady dressed entirely in lavender, a tattooed trucker with a soft spot for cats, a kid who is a little too obsessed with Star Wars, and a woman who lives with a houseful of nontraditional pets. Along the way, they learn that sometimes you have to get a little bit lost to be found.