Asian Booklist

The last thing Jack Baxi expected when a detective rang his doorbell in the middle of the night was that he'd be tortured and left for dead, with a young woman he's never met before. Now, running for their lives, Jack and Aisha frantically try to discover why the detective was so convinced they both have information on a missing […]

Demetri wants to study criminology at university to understand why people around him carry knives. Jhemar is determined to advocate for his community following the murder of a loved one. Carl's exclusion leaves him vulnerable to the sinister school-to-prison pipeline, but he is resolute to defy expectations. And Tony, the tireless manager of a community centre, is fighting not only […]

A positive, reassuring and anxiety-eliminating book helping children change the way they think about the world Pandemics, war, terror, natural disasters - the world feels scarier than ever. And we're being inundated with rolling coverage on our TV screens, tablets, phones, computers... So much so that politics, global warming, health and the global economy are now some of the biggest […]

The Giant Dark is an award-winning debut novel about love and fame. Aida is a rock star at her peak with a devoted cultish fanbase who follow her every move. When she disappears into a complicated love affair with an ex, they are determined to uncover her truths. After a decade of silence, Aida and Ehsan reconnect, hoping to recreate the […]

A funny, magical story, ideal for children practising their reading at home or in school. Manju's stuck at home and she is most definitely BORED. Looking for entertainment, she summons the genie from the magic lamp. When he turns up with a terrible cold, the genie can't hear any of Manju's wishes properly and his magic is even more strange […]

A priceless manuscript. A missing scholar. A trail of riddles. Bombay, 1950 For over a century, one of the world's great treasures, a six-hundred-year-old copy of Dante's The Divine Comedy, has been safely housed at Bombay's Asiatic Society. But when it vanishes, together with the man charged with its care, British scholar and war hero, John Healy, the case lands on […]

Transform and recycle household objects into your very own home-made toys and machines! Learn about the centre of gravity by making a balancing bird, create a toroidal vortex with a smoke-ring machine, and turn a spoon into an electromagnet. Chances are you won’t need to buy the materials required for these machines because they’re all in your house right now. […]

From fresh new voice Aliya Ali-Afzal, Would I Lie to You? is a page-turning, warm and funny debut about what happens when you have your dream life – and are about to lose it. At the school gates, Faiza fits in. It took a few years, but now the snobbish mothers who mistook her for the nanny treat her as one of […]

The Roles We Play is Sabba Khan's debut graphic novel collecting a series of short essays that explore themes of identity, belonging and memory within the East London Pakistani Muslim diaspora. Together the stories paint a vivid snapshot of contemporary British Asian life and the complex generational shifts experienced within migrant communities today. Issues of race, gender and class are […]

A magical, eye-opening account of a journey into a Europe that rarely makes the news and is in danger of being erased altogether. Another Europe. A Europe few people believe exists and many wish didn't. Muslim Europe. Writer and documentary-maker Tharik Hussain sets off with his wife and young daughters around the Western Balkans, home to the largest indigenous Muslim […]

‘From now on when you see something, you’re seeing it because I want you to see it. When you think of something, it’ll be because I want you to think about it…’ And with those words, the obsession begins. A writer has left his family in Brooklyn for a three month residency at the Deuter Centre in Berlin, hoping for undisturbed days […]

We still do not know how to talk about sex. The current debate about sexual entitlement, objectification, rape culture or pornography fixates on the idea of consent as an objective frame through which to view our sexual encounters. Yet stripped of morality and ethics, consent is a blunt tool, of limited use when contemplating one of the oldest and most […]

A contemporary story about life in foster care, perfect for fans of Jacqueline Wilson. Ruby Ali's eighteen-year-old sister Alisha has left the care centre where they live, and Ruby is being sent to live with a new foster family. If she can sabotage life at her new home, she'll get to go and live with her sister again, right? But […]

The shark was beneath my bed, growing large as the room, large as the lighthouse, rising from unfathomable depths until it ripped the whole island from its roots. The bed was a boat, the shark a tide, and it pulled me so far out to sea I was only a speck, a spot, a mote, a dying star in an […]

On an ordinary working day Leila Syed receives a call that cleaves her life in two. Her brother-in-law’s voice is filled with panic. He’s at his son’s nursery to pick up Max. But he isn’t there. Your worst nightmare… Leila was supposed to drop Max off that morning. But she forgot. Racing to the carpark, she grasps the horror of […]

Aarti has lived on the island with Aunt for as long as she can remember. Like the weather, Aunt rules her world with rare warmth. Aarti's only comforts are a book of Indian myths full of blue gods, a fox's friendship, and a toy rabbit she finds in a locked room. Then, she learns Aunt has been feeding her lies. […]

Anil Seth's radical new theory of consciousness challenges our understanding of perception and reality, doing for brain science what Dawkins did for evolutionary biology. Being You is not as simple as it sounds. Somehow, within each of our brains, billions of neurons work to create our conscious experience. How does this happen? Why do we experience life in the first person? […]

Laugh your head off with this fully-illustrated new series from award-winning Nadia Shireen. Perfect for readers age 7 to 107, fans of Dog Man, Roald Dahl, Mr Gum and David Walliams, and anyone who loves to laugh. Fox cub siblings Ted and Nancy are on the run from Princess Buttons, the scariest street cat in the Big City. They flee […]

Join Roma Agrawal, the award-winning young structural engineer who worked on The Shard, for an exciting behind-the-scenes look at some of the world's most amazing landmarks. Meet the extraordinary people who challenged our beliefs about what's possible, pioneering remarkable inventions that helped build the Brooklyn Bridge in the US, the Pantheon in Italy, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the Shard […]

You're in at 7am, there until 7pm and marking into the late hours. You've got one student who's a full time carer, another who's pregnant, and a third who's just joined a gang. You haven't got enough textbooks to go around, and one of the parents just called you an 'extremist'. You've just gone through a devastating heartbreak and you […]

Times have changed: you can launch a successful enterprise with your phone, sell through social media and tap into a whole world of opportunities. Unprepared to Entrepreneur is an honest guide to launching your own business, sharing real stories from real people who have tested, failed and won at business. It profiles the underdogs, those who brainstormed ideas whilst travelling on […]

We all celebrate birthdays and friendships, the onset of seasons, religious events and national holidays. Our celebrations are full of colour, specially prepared food and good cheer. We All Celebrate introduces some less mentioned celebrations from around the world to children, among those that are well known and bring good memories.

Calcutta, 1923 When a Hindu theologian is found murdered in his home, the city is on the brink of all-out religious war. Can officers of the Imperial Police Force, Captain Sam Wyndham and Sergeant Surendranath Banerjee track down those responsible in time to stop a bloodbath? Set at a time of heightened political tension, beginning in atmospheric Calcutta and taking […]

This story is part of Reading Champion, a series carefully linked to book bands to encourage independent reading skills, developed with Dr Sue Bodman and Glen Franklin of UCL Institute of Education (IOE) Reading Champion offers independent reading books for children to practise and reinforce their developing reading skills. Fantastic, original stories are accompanied by engaging artwork and a reading […]

30 Things I Love About Myself is the exuberant, witty, irresistible, hilarious and unforgettable story of Nina Mistry, who finds herself accidentally locked in a prison cell on the night of her 30th birthday, where she discovers a tatty little self-help book that will inspire her to take a long hard look at her life, who she really is and […]