Books by Barbara Spencer

'Where historical fiction and fantasy collide''You must promise never to speak out about your heritage,' his grandmother warned, 'because people fear anything different.'

Growing up amidst the ruins of war, four children play among the bridges and cobblestone walkways of an old city, using them as a backdrop for their games. Pieter Bader, the eldest, wants nothing more than to work with their father in the family business, designers of mirrors for royalty since the 17th century.

Micky thinks life's rotten: he's the youngest in the family and can't do anything right. Fortunately, help is at hand when an old fisherman offers to teach Micky to swim. Although, there's something rather curious about this particular fisherman...He wears a seaweed shawl and his boat appears to have legs.

Lives will change forever. Children of powerful and wealthy parents are vanishing. It's serial kidnapping on an international scale and the kidnappers are calling all the shots.

Philip James Longbotham is twelve. His nickname is OC and he possesses a most amazing brain. It might not go round corners but it's a whiz at science and plays chess like a dream.

One morning when she gets up, Mary feels quite miserable and is horrid to her baby brother, Daniel. But when she steps on a old lady's toe at the park and refuses to say sorry, something quite extraordinary happens - she suddenly finds she can't talk and can only cluck.

Fifteen year-old Molly is determined to become a swimmer, to the dismay of her parents. When the family go to stay in a 17th century manor house, Molly inadvertently triggers a time-chute and re-appears in 1648, at the end of the Civil War, to find she has taken the place of Molly Hampton, the eldest daughter in a Puritan family.