Winner of the Waterstones Children's Book Prize 2020 for older readers, the 2024 Nero Book Awards Prize for Children's Fiction and the 2025 Tir na n-Og Award for best English Language Book.
Liz Hyder is the award-winning author of four novels, two for young adults (YA) and two for grown-ups. Her debut YA novel Bearmouth won the Waterstones Children’s Book Prrize for Older Readers, the Branford Boase Award and was the The Times’s Children’s Book of the Year. The Gifts, her debut adult book, was runner-up of the McKitterick Prize and was followed by The Illusions. Her latest YA novel, The Twelve, set in Pembrokeshire, won the Nero Book Award for Children’s Fiction and the Tir na n-Og Award (English language). She has been running creative writing workshops for over 15 years.
[Photo credit: Ashleigh Cadet]
'The Twelve' by Liz Hyder
WINNER OF THE NERO PRIZE FOR CHILDREN'S FICTION
FROM THE AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR OF BEARMOUTH, COMES THIS HAUNTINGLY MAGICAL NEW NOVEL, HAILED BY READERS AS A MODERN CLASSIC
'Hauntingly beautiful' Hannah Gold, author of The Last Bear
'The Twelve reads like a modern classic, with echoes of Alan Garner, Marcus Sedgwick, and C.S. Lewis.' Essie Fox
'Dark, dreamy, surreal and beautiful.' Katya Balen, author of October, October
It's supposed to be a treat for Kit, a winter holiday by the coast with her sister Libby and their mum. But when Libby vanishes into thin air, and no one else remembers her, Kit is faced with a new reality - one in which her sister never existed.
Then she meets Story, a local boy who remembers Libby perfectly. Together they embark on a journey beyond their wildest imagination into a world steeped in ancient folklore. Can Kit and Story uncover the secret of the Twelve and rescue Libby before Time runs out?