The broken blade

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Angela McAllister

Abandoned to the workhouse after the death of her guardians, Cora Parry refuses to accept her fate. Under the tuition of persuasive streetrat Fletch, Cora finds herself reluctantly drawn deep into the Victorian underworld. As she is gradually seduced into a life of crime, Cora creates a persona for herself - Carrie - allowing her to separate her uneasy conscience from her actions. But soon things are spiralling out of control. Carrie is committing acts of crime that Cora knows she can't possibly have done. Where does Carrie end and Cora begin? Who is really in control, and where will it end?

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Robert Louis Stevenson

KIDNAPPED is an adventure story that has become the model for any thriller of escape and suspense. Set in 1751, the flight of David Balfour and Alan Breck across the Highlands of Scotland is based on real events. Though he wrote the book to make money, while living as an invalid in Bournemouth. Stevenson was proud of it; he inscribed a presentation copy with the couplet. Here is the one sound page of all my writing. The one I'm proud of and that I delight in. Rowland Hilder is famous for his paintings of the English countryside but his work in book illustration covered a much wider canvas. His drawing for KIDNAPPED were first published in 1930 and have undeservedly, been long out of print. A sixteen-year-old orphan is kidnapped by his villainous uncle, but later escapes and becomes involved in the struggle of the Scottish highlanders against English rule.

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Chris Bradford

Orphaned by a ninja pirate attack off the coast of Japan in 1611, twelve-year-old English lad Jack Fletcher is determined to prove himself, despite the bullying of fellow students, when the legendary sword master who rescued him begins training him as a samurai warrior.

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Monica Furlong

A mute orphan boy, with only shadowy recollections of his past, runs away from his cruel master and eventually joins Robin Hood and his followers in their forest hideaway.