Books in the National Archives series

"In sixteen hundred and sixty-five there was hardly anyone left alive."Spring 1665, LondonSam was just a young boy when his master took him out of the orphanage to be his servant. When he was old enough, he was going to become his master's apprentice, a shoemaker, able to make his own way in the world.But that was before the plague arrived.Abandoned by Alice, his master's maid and the closet thing that Sam's ever had to a mother, Sam finds himself nailed into his workshop home with only his dying master and pet dog Budge for company. The officials call it 'quarantine'. But for Sam it's a death sentence.Can Sam escape? And even if he does, will he be able to survive on London's ravaged streets?

A boy works in the dockyard where the Titanic is being built, then gets a job on the ship. As he witnesses a series of mistakes, short-cuts and bad decisions, he becomes more and more worried about what could happen to the ship. But he's preoccupied by his rivalry with a fellow ship's boy...