Silly books to read in the middle of the night...

Cart and Cwidder by Diana Wynne Jones

This is eminently suitable to read at 3am as the story is so good it's almost a pleasure to haul your sorry ass out of bed. Moril is one of a family of travelling musicians touring Dalemark. His father is killed and his mother takes up again with an old flame, leaving him with a moony older brother, a bolshy sister, a posh teenage refugee and a magic cwidder. Fortunately they have a very sensible horse...

This is the first of the 4 Dalemark books so there are still 3 more to go, hurrah!

Eagle Strike by Anthony Horowitz

One of a series of books about teenage spy Alex Rider. Amazingly, this is really too lightweight for even the most sleep-deprived of mothers. There's just so little too it. By the time you've done 2 night time feeds it's all gone!

Sabriel by Garth Nix

This is more like it! Sabriel's dad is Abhorsen; a kind of nice necromancer who makes sure the dead rest in peace. When Sabriel is 18 and just about to leave her posh girls' school an apparition brings her father's sword and bells. This is a bad sign and means her father has somehow got stuck in Death and Sabriel sets out to rescue him. Can she get the guy, kill the baddies and save the entire planet? I think she probably can ;-)

My only problem with this book is that the evil necromancer is called Kerrigor which I'm sure is a sort of Irish butter...