A good story will entice you in with questions from the beginning, and Sinead O’Hart’s latest novel, The Time Tider, does it from the very first page.

Who is Mara? Why is she stealing food from the homeless outreach and avoiding authority – and what on earth is a “soft place”? Mara has never really questioned why she and her dad Gabriel live in a van, constantly on the move, but as she gets older she really needs to know – why can’t she go to school or have friends? What is her dad’s dangerous, unspeakable job, and why is he obsessed with clocks? When she uncovers a stash of papers hidden in the van addressed to “The Tider”, discussing the need to harvest lost time, she seems on the verge of pushing her dad into telling the truth, but in a frightening sequence of events, the papers are lost and Gabriel is abducted. All she has left is the thin thread of help which could come from finding her dad’s friend Lenny. Together with her new friend Jan and a mysterious set of instructions, she needs to find her dad before it’s too late…for all of us.

This is a fantastic book for confident readers from Y5 upwards; O’Hart is a master at twisting plots and increasing tension in a completely believable way. Mara is a really likeable character and you’ll find yourself glued to the story to help her untangle the mysteries of time and the secretive people who guard it.