I read a lot of junior and young adult books, not only for my job but because I really enjoy reading them, and I have finished a couple of great ones lately that are quite different from each other but which I liked equally.
The books were "The Ghost Child" by Sonya Hartnett and "The Palace of Laughter" by Jon Berkley.
I adore the way Sonya Hartnett writes - her prose is exquisite and she is not wasteful with words - and the apparent simplicity of her stories belie the insightful and essential truthfulness of her observations about humankind. That sounds really earnest but when I finish a book of hers I find myself thinking about it days later at unexpected times.
Jon Berkley is an illustrator turned author (rather like D. M. Cornish of "Monster Blood Tattoo" fame) and I must say I was quite impressed with his first effort. The hero character is an orphan, there is an evil circus impressario, villainy, despair, tribes of street kids who inhabit a festering industrial underworld, a tiger, eccentric elderly mentors, and an angel who saves our hero and by doing so becomes earth bound forever. Familiar themes but with a twist.