Waterstones

There’s also 30% off ghoulish books for children: Meg and Mog, Julia Donaldson’s Room on the Broom, Funnybones: Bumps in the Night, Spookyrumpus or the Spooky Sticker Book.

Lily has grown up believing she accidentally killed her mother when she was four. She not only has her own memory of holding the gun, but her father’s account of the event. Now fourteen, she yeams for her mother, and for forgiveness. Living on a peach farm in South Carolina with her father, she has only one friend: Rosaleen, a black servant whose sharp exterior hides a tender heart. South Carolina in the sixties is a place where segregation is still considered a cause worth fighting for. When racial tension explodes one summer afternoon, and Rosaleen is arrested and beaten, Lily is compelled to act. Fugitives from justice and from Lily’s harsh and unyielding father, they follow a trail left by the woman who died ten years before. Finding sanctuary in the home of three beekeeping sisters, Lily starts a journey as much about her understanding of the world, as about the mystery surrounding her mother.

The book read something like a fantasy of the best possible outcome of running away from home – a seamless journey to a welcoming home with beds, companionship and work. If this is a little too much for some to swallow, it is countered by the fascinating insight into beekeeping – which pervades the latter part of the book with healing philosophies and a variety of novel uses for the products of a bee hive. Those who are interested in wildlife and gardening will love the in-depth affinity this book has with the art of bee management and honey production.

The Secret Life of Bees is as naive and hopeful as its narrator, but manages to offset the stifling heat of Carolina and the sickly sweet aroma of honey with the brooding shadow of local white male authority figures who represent danger, punishment without justice and prejudice in its most extreme forms. Buy it for only £5.99 with free standard UK delivery at Waterstones: