Books published by Simon & Schuster
Style: Average
Attitude: Unobjectionable → Positive
Peter & Kate are thrown back to the 18th century and are befriended by Gideon and his new employers, the Byng family.
Two youngsters making friends and mustering resources to return them home. Time travel and paradoxes. Big and small families. Peter's parents' effective separation and reconciliation. Life in the Past and the Present.
Adventure, Family, Friendship, Historical, Time-Travel
Style: Average → Good
Attitude: Unobjectionable → Positive
Kate & her father have returned to the 20th Century unwittingly leaving Peter behind in the 18th and bringing instead the criminal Tar Man who uses his new-found abilities as a time-traveller to steal and plunder in this new century.
Slightly less interesting second story. Some nice family touches especially between the adult Peter and his father. Some uncondoned violence from criminal characters. Series starts to become mired in time-travel technobabble.
Adventure, Family, Friendship, Historical, Time-Travel
Style: Average
Attitude: Unobjectionable
Polly sets out as an inexperienced maid in the big household of Swallowcliffe Hall, trying to find her feet while helping friends, being helped by others, and trying to ignore the scorn of some more experienced maids.
Conventional upstairs-downstairs story. Friendship & scorn for a newcomer. Circumspect subplot about an illegitimate child and the suggestion that he be aborted.
Historical
Style: Average
Attitude: Unobjectionable
Grace, more tomboy than girl, is finding it hard to work as a kitchenmaid, especially when the male staff are leaving to join the army in France and her father needs help in the stables.
A conventional period story, unoriginal but inoffensive. Horror and uselessness of War. Challenge to traditional work patterns. Family strength even in disagreement. Old story about an illegitimate child.
Family, Historical
Pendragon - The Merchant of Death
Style: Poor
Attitude: Unobjectionable
Bobby Pendragon has just kissed his girlfriend for the first time when his Uncle Press turns up and demands that he accompany him on a mission of vital importance which turns out to be through a portal which takes them to another world.
Poorly written; unobjectionable
Fantasy
Pendragon - The Lost City of Faar
Style: Poor
Attitude: Unobjectionable
Bobby & Press have followed Saint Dane to Cloral, a world covered completely by water, to prevent him from pushing as many worlds as he can to the point of chaos.
Fantasy
Style: Poor
Attitude: Take Care
Bobby finds Saint Dane manipulating things in 1937 New York, and must work out what link there is between a New York gangster, the Nazi Party, the Hindenburg Airship disaster and Saint Dane's plan for total chaos.
Fantasy
Style: Average
Attitude: Take Care
Matt, a child clone of an artificially ancient rich drug baron, has to come to terms with the way the world sees him as he grows up and discovers the truth behind his way of life.
Growing-Up, Moral Issue, SciFi
Style: Weak → Average
Attitude: Some Care Needed → Unobjectionable
Nora Grey finds herself partnered for the Sex Education course in Biology by the dark and unknown Patch who seems to be able to tell her a lot about herself, making her uncomfortable in the process.
Dark and Light angelic beings closely akin to humans and who can possess humans to a limited extent. A very physical attitude to sex education although without anything explicit. Some self-sacrifice by friends and relatives for each others' good.
Romantic, Spooky
Style: Good
Attitude: Take Care
Wendy Darling, an inquisitive but innocent girl, learns more and more about the adult world as her family goes through difficult times.
Coping with, Family, Growing-Up