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Fiction by Care Experienced authors The Sunlight Pilgrims Jenni Fagan 2017 The Sunlight Pilgrims is set in a caravan park in the north of Scotland. Here. a group of people who live on the margins are waiting out an extreme winter. One character, Stella, is a transgender teenager who is terrified at the relentless march of puberty and who we see struggling to gain acceptance. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Burial Rites Hannah Kent 2014 Burial Rites is set in Iceland. In 1829 Agnes Magnusdottir is sentenced to death for her part in the murder of two men. As the story unfolds, we learn that Agnes was in foster care as child. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The House in the Cerulean Sea TJ Klune 2021 The House in the Cerulean Sea, Klune's first stand-alone novel published with the Macmillan Tor imprint, was partially inspired by the Sixties Scoop, where the Canadian government removed Indigenous children from their homes and placed them with unrelated white, middle-class families. Seeing the similarities of this event take place in the current-day Southern United States, Klune felt a need to write a story celebrating children's differences and to show the positive effects of giving children a safe and supportive place to be themselves. Linus Baker is a 40-year-old man who lives with his devious cat Calliope, and who works as a case-worker for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth (DICOMY). He spends his work days overseeing the care of magical children in orphanages, and his nights listening to his old records. When Extremely Upper Management calls him, he is given a Classified Level 4 (he had only been given a Classified Level 3 once, which was an unfortunate incident), in what will probably be his most challenging task ever; taking a trip to the Marsyas Orphanage, where six extraordinary children are kept by an equally extraordinary caretaker, Arthur Parnassus. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Bea's Witch Daniel Ingram-Brown 2021 Beatrice Crosse is nearly 12 years ago. She was adopted from the care system but is not happy and she runs away from home, only to encounter a witch who offers her treasure. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Fugitive Pieces (Novel) Anne Michaels 1996 Fugitive Pieces (1996) is an award winning novel by Canadian writer, Anne Michaels (b. 1958). The novel is in 2 parts, the 1st centred on Jakob Beer, a 7 year old Jewish boy who survives the Holocaust by hiding in the forest and being taken in by an acheologist who gets the boy to safety in Greece. The 2nd part of the novel is the story of Ben, a Canadian professor born to survivors of the Holocaust. Ben becomes fascinated by Jakob's story. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Moll Flanders Daniel Defoe 2010 Moll Flanders is a novel by Daniel Defoe, first published in 1722. It purports to be the true account of the life of the eponymous Moll, detailing her exploits from birth until old age. Presented as Moll’s autobiography, and published anonymously, the novel, through its self-made protagonist, highlights the intricacies and double standards of Moll’s contemporary society, and offers an irresistible and evocative insight into both the drawing rooms and seedy back alleys of seventeenth-century England. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Demon Copperhead Barbara Kingsolver 2023 Demon Copperhead is a 2022 novel by Barbara Kingsolver. It was a co-recipient of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and won the 2023 Women's Prize for Fiction. Kingsolver was inspired by the Charles Dickens novel David Copperfield.[While Kingsolver's novel is similarly about a boy born into poverty, Demon Copperhead is set in Appalachia and explores contemporary issues.[3][4][5] The protagonist and narrator is born Damon Fields to a teenage mother in a trailer home. He is raised in Lee County, located in Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, and nicknamed "Demon Copperhead" for the color of his hair and his attitude. As Demon grows up, he must use his charms and wits to survive poverty in the contemporary American South. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Burial of Ghosts Ann Cleeves 2011 Abandoned as a baby, twenty-five-year-old Lizzie Bartholomew spent her childhood moving between foster homes and has had more than her fair share of troubles. Now a holiday in Morocco seems to be the perfect escape. Especially when she meets Philip, a fellow tourist. After a brief affair, Lizzie returns to England, only to find a solicitor's letter waiting for her. Philip Samson has died and in his will, has left Lizzie a gift of £15,000. But there are conditions attached to this unexpected legacy that will soon force Lizzie to confront terrifying secrets from her past life . . . External Website

Fiction by Care Experienced authors Shadow and Bone (novel) Leigh Bardugo 2012 Shadow and Bone, written by Leigh Bardugo, is a fantasy adventure narrated by teenage orphan, Alina Starkov. This is the first book in the Grisha trilology. The sequel, Siege and Storm, was published in 2013, and the final in the series, Ruin and Rising, was published in 2014. External Website

Fiction by Care Experienced authors The Good Guy Susan Beale 2016 The Good Guy is inspired by Susan Beale's life. Beale was adopted as a baby and only reconnected with her birth mother several years ago. The inspiration for the book came from her adoption files. The papers include interviews with her mother, grandmother and one with her birth father. As well as helping Susan understand why she was adopted, the papers paint a portrait of America on the cusp of the sexual revolution. It’s a time of unprecedented prosperity and conformity. Young people enjoy new freedoms, but gender roles remain clearly defined and expectations of morality and purity are strictly, and sometimes cruelly, enforced. It’s a world about to be shaken to its core. In the novel, Ted, a car-tyre salesman in 1960s suburban New England, is a dreamer who craves admiration. His wife, Abigail, longs for a life of the mind. Single-girl Penny just wants to be loved. When a chance encounter brings Ted and Penny together, he becomes enamoured and begins inventing a whole new life with her at its centre. But when this fantasy collides with reality, the fallout threatens everything, and everyone, he holds dear. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Flight of Gemma Hardy Margot Livesey 2012 The Flight of Gemma Hardy is a modern take on a classic story—Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre—that will fascinate readers of the Gothic original and fans of modern literary fiction alike, with its lyrical prose, robust characters, and abundant compassion. Set in early 1960s Scotland, this breakout novel from award-winning author Margot Livesey is a tale of determination and spirit that, like The Three Weissmanns of Westport and A Thousand Acres, spins an unforgettable new story from threads of our shared, still-living literary past. External Website

Fiction by Care Experienced authors Great Expectations Charles Dickens 2004 Great Expectations is Charles Dickens's thirteenth novel and his penultimate (completed) novel; a bildungsroman which depicts the personal growth and personal development of an orphan nicknamed Pip who is in kinship care, living with his sister in the marshes of Kent. Great Expectations follows Pip's childhood and young adult years, a blacksmith's apprentice in a country village. He suddenly comes into a large fortune (his great expectations) from a mysterious benefactor and moves to London where he enters high society. He thinks he knows where the money has come from but he turns out to be sadly mistaken. The story also follows Pip's dealings with Estella, a young woman he adores but who cannot return his love. External Website

Fiction by Care Experienced authors The Outside Child Nina Bawden 2011 Jane has always been happy living in kinship care with her two eccentric aunts and seeing her sailor father when his ship is in. But one day she notices a new picture in her father's cabin--a photograph of a small boy and girl. That is when she finds out for the first time that she has a half-brother and sister. Jane is determined to find out more about them, so she and her best friend Plato Jones set out on a mission to track them down. `They track down her brother and sister to their home in the East End of London. There she finds still more surprises lie in store for her. Can Jane at last be part of a 'proper' family, or must she always remain the outside child? This is the story of a girl and her family and the secrets they keep from one another. Both funny and poignant, The Outside Child is a beautifully drawn study of adolescence from one of Britain's most skilled writers for children. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience After Anne Logan Steiner 2023 In After Anne, Logan Steiner explores "the story behind the story", the story of Canadian Lucy Maud Montgomery who gave us the delighful and enduring character, Anne of Green Gables. The novel is a tribute to Montgomery, revealing the hidden challenges faced by Montgomery during her life while also celebrating her work. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Prudence (Custard Protocol, 1 Gail Carriger 2015 Fantasy series. Prudence is the child of Lord Maccon and Alexa Tarrabottie but has been brought up by Lord Akeldama because her magic makes it safer for her to live apart from her parents. She has had regular contact with them and sees herself as having three parents. When Prudence Alessandra Maccon Akeldama ("Rue" to her friends) is bequeathed an unexpected dirigible, she does what any sensible female under similar circumstances would do -- she christens it the Spotted Custard and floats off to India. Soon, she stumbles upon a plot involving local dissidents, a kidnapped brigadier's wife, and some awfully familiar Scottish werewolves. Faced with a dire crisis (and an embarrassing lack of bloomers), Rue must rely on her good breeding -- and her metanatural abilities -- to get to the bottom of it all. . . External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience A Discovery of Witches Deborah Harkness 2011 Deborah Harkness’ debut novel, A Discovery of Witches, is the story of Diana Bishop who was born to Rebecca Bishop and Stephen Proctor, both extremely powerful witches. From a very early age, she displayed signs of extraordinary power and ability, notably time-walking at the age of three. At the young age of seven, she was orphaned when both of her parents were killed while in Africa. Subsequently, she was raised by her aunt Sarah Bishop and Emily Mather, Sarah's partner. This terrible loss of her parents caused Diana to reject her magic altogether. Diana went on to obtain a bachelor's degree from a college in Maine and a graduate degree from Oxford. After she obtained her PhD, she became a professor of history at Yale. External Website

Children's Fiction Anne of Green Gables (adapted) Lucy Maud Montgomery 2013 First published in 1908, “Anne of Green Gables” is Lucy Maud Montgomery’s enduring children’s classic which chronicles the coming of age of a young orphan girl, from the fictional community of Bolingbroke, Nova Scotia. The story begins with her arrival at the Prince Edward Island farm of Miss Marilla Cuthbert and Mr. Matthew Cuthbert, siblings in their fifties and sixties, who had decided to adopt a young boy to help out on the farm. However, through a misunderstanding, the orphanage sends Anne Shirley instead. While the Cuthbert’s are at first determined to return Anne to the orphanage, after a few days they decide instead to keep her. Set in the close knit farm community of Avonlea, based on the author’s real life home on Prince Edward Island, “Anne of Green Gables” is at once both a comic and tragic tale. Read by millions, this novel begins a series of books that the author continued writing until the day she died. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience Quirke (series) John Banville 2007 The Quirke series of crime novels by Benjamin Black (pseudonym for John Banville) revolve around a pathologist named Dr Garret Quirke and is set in 1950s Dublin. Quirke was orphaned as a child. He grew up in a catholic church run industrial school in Carricklea in County Sligo, west of Dublin. The boy was later taken out of the school and adopted by the wealthy Judge Garret Griffin. He later trained to become a pathologist but in the series he does some sleuthing too. Quirke is a prickly character who often drinks too much to forget his tortuous childhood and the way he abandoned his own daughter. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience A Room Made of Leaves Kate Grenville 2020 What if Elizabeth Macarthur—wife of the notorious John Macarthur, wool baron in the earliest days of Sydney—had written a shockingly frank secret memoir? And what if novelist Kate Grenville had miraculously found and published it? That’s the starting point for A Room Made of Leaves, a playful dance of possibilities between the real and the invented. Marriage to a ruthless bully, the impulses of her heart, the search for power in a society that gave women none: this Elizabeth Macarthur manages her complicated life with spirit and passion, cunning and sly wit. Her memoir lets us hear—at last!—what one of those seemingly demure women from history might really have thought. At the centre of A Room Made of Leaves is one of the most toxic issues of our own age: the seductive appeal of false stories. This book may be set in the past, but it’s just as much about the present, where secrets and lies have the dangerous power to shape reality. Kate Grenville’s return to the territory of The Secret River is historical fiction turned inside out, a stunning sleight of hand by one of our most original writers. External Website

Fiction by Care Experienced authors Fairyland Sumner Locke Elliott 1991 This is the final novel written by Sumner Locke. Autobiographical, it is the story of an aspiring writer coming to terms with his sexuality during the repressive 1930s and 1940s in Australia External Website