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CJ Loughty's The Girl in Black is a spooky, funny mystery for 11 year olds about a boy who's certain the new girl next door is a witch.
Archie Wiggins is twelve and he's never liked the house next door. It's big and creepy, the garden's a jungle and it's stood empty for two years. So when his football sails over the fence on the day the new people move in, he really doesn't fancy fetching it.
He does, of course (even though Mum has told him not to). And there in the long grass is a girl in black from head to toe, with a book in one hand and a stick in the other. She says two strange words and a heavy rock floats up off the lawn.
It isn't a stick, she tells him coldly. It's a wand.
Her name's Isabelle Lockhart and she'd very much like Archie to keep quiet about what he's seen. But how can he? The removal van next door gets emptied in minutes. Twice! Isabelle knows where his ball landed without seeing it. And she's a lot stronger than she looks.
So Archie turns detective. There's a Sunday stake-out in a neighbour's bushes with his dad's monocular (a yappy Jack Russell soon puts a stop to that), then a bike chase to a shop full of cauldrons and broomsticks. Isabelle's in there buying a little bottle of something called bograt's blood. Even the shopkeeper asks if she's in some kind of danger.
It's a very British read, and a very funny one. Archie's thoughts ('Oh poop!') and his bickering with his big brother Oliver will be familiar to anyone who shares a house with a sibling. And his mum? A bit of a dragon, by his own account.
Underneath the jokes there's a proper mystery building. Why has this family really moved to sleepy Waddington? What are they trying to protect themselves from? You piece it together with Archie, one clue at a time.
If your reader likes spooky stories set somewhere ordinary, with a nosy hero who can't leave well alone, try The Haunting of Aveline Jones next. Aveline gets packed off to her strict aunt's house on a freezing Cornish coast for half-term.
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