Carroll, Emma.
IN DARKLING WOOD
New York : Delacorte, 2017
IL 5-8, RL 4.6
ISBN 978-0-399-55601-2

Alice is thrilled, excited, and terribly scared when the London hospital calls to say they’ve got a heart for her little brother. But she’s also upset to find that when Theo goes for surgery, she must stay with Nell, a grandmother she doesn’t know, in Nell’s cottage in the remote English countryside.

Harsh and cold to Alice and estranged from her own son, Alice’s father, Nell is determined to cut down the mysterious old woods around her home. When Alice meets a strange girl who tells her that Darkling Wood is full of fairies, she doesn’t believe it. But are the fairies really warning Alice, as the elusive girl claims—threatening revenge if Nell cuts down their woods? And whose story is being told in the letters interspersed throughout Alice’s story, letters from a girl to her brother off fighting at the end of World War I?  Will Theo recover from his surgery, and can Alice learn her family’s secrets and help them all heal in time? Is there magic in Darkling Wood? (New Hampshire Great Stone Face nominee, 2018-2019)