Books with author Andrew Pollack

Pretty Jen and silent Casey. Violent Sharp and self-harming Selfie. Lauren, who won't eat and Boo who eats things she shouldn't. Brick, the brilliant hacker full of rage. Robin, the charmer, escape artist and master thief. Hasan, who did something so bad even the adult carers working in their secure unit for troubled adolescents can't hide their dislike of him. And Al, the magician with a book of spells that are beginning to cost more than he's willing to pay. Ten troubled teenagers locked in with their worst fears. Freedom is a thing of the past. And something is stirring inside the magic book. Something watchful. Something hungry...

Imagine being thirteen years old and getting into a car that’s going to drive you to a building where you’ll be locked up with nine other children. You don’t know what they’ve done, they don’t know what you’ve done. They all seem messed up and scary. All of them have secrets, but none of their secrets are as huge as the one you’re hiding from them.When will you get out? How will you get out? What is it going to be like? You don’t know.All you know is, the next time you wake up, your bedroom door will be locked. Every time you wake up.Ten children locked up, working out how to cope, how to survive, who to trust and who to avoid.One of the children has a book of spells, and all of the spells work. They come with a serious price though, because the children aren’t the only ones locked up in there, and the other prisoner is much much older, more dangerous, more broken and more desperate than any of them.This is a story of a struggle to fit in and a struggle to get out. A story packed with secrets and lies, where a touch on your back could be a flirtatious invitation or it could be a home-made shank, a cry in the night can be homesickness or something far far worse.Magic, theft, fights over pecking order, crushes with a twist and daring jail-breaks. Finding out what makes these children tick, and whether ten broken watches can manage to synchronise together when it really matters.Imagine “Five Children and It”, if the Five Children were juvenile delinquents, and the ‘It’ was more like Steven King’s version. A Young Adult novel, but assuming you ever lived through teenaged years suitable for adults too