Julia Marshall

A Case with a Bang is the final book in the series of funny detective stories for early readers set in a friendly forest in which two determinedly fair police-retired-toad Gordon and the indefatigable mouse Buffy-solve the mystery and stop regularly to eat cake.

"Hattie is a street-smart country girl in her first year of school. She lives just outside of nowhere, right next to no one at all. Luckily she's starting school and that brings new adventures. Hattie gets her first swimming badge, falls madly in love with a hermit crab, and meets a best friend. Sometimes things go wrong like when the hairdresser cuts her hair into stumps just in time for school photos."--Amazon.com.

It's Dani's first summer vacation and she is staying on an island with Ella, her best friend in the world. Dad is still in hospital but he calls every day, and Ella and Dani stay busy building huts, fishing, exploring, and swimming. Then Dad turns up, but with his nurse too! This is not the visit anyone had imagined and Dani isn't sure her life is happy any more.

The final story in this big-hearted series takes on the most important case ever investigated in Detective Gordon's forest -- where is Buffy's mother? Gordon faces his old nemesis, the fox, in an investigation that leads to the edges of the forest.

First, Little Bear hears the story of the Night Guardian, who lives in the woods and makes sure all animals go to bed. But who tells the Night Guardian when it's bedtime? The second story is about the brave girl Zhara who seeks the forest's most delicious blackberries. In the third we meet Bo, the little man with the big overcoat, who finds it hard to sleep. Finally, Little Bear falls asleep, and there in bed beside her are her new storybook friends....

"A read-aloud storybook about cunning, courage and survival in which a girl sets out to save her father from the giant who turns everyone she meets to stone."--publisher