The trouble with 11-year-old Dawn Buckle is that nobody ever noticed her. The lollipop lady didn't notice her; even her own family didn't notice her. Which is why she was a good choice for a spy. Dawn Undercover (Bloomsbury, £6.99), by Anna Dale, is a spy story with a difference. It starts off ordinarily enough, but soon the pace picks up as Dawn is chosen for spy work and assigned a mission to track down a traitor. It's a funny story, with a clever twist at the end - for girls rather than boys, because of its female spy.

If I am being stereotypical, then Catherine MacPhail's Nemesis: Into the Shadows (Bloomsbury, £5.99) will probably appeal more to boys. It's the first in a four-part series, with a story as good as many adult thrillers. It starts with a dying man lying in a pool of blood in a lift; he grabs hold of boy called Ram, and tries to tell him something. Ram has no idea how either he or the man got there; nevertheless, he finds himself pursued by the police and by someone called the Wolf, who wants him dead. It's a gripping plot, with plenty of twists.

Also scary is Tom Pow's Captives (Corgi, £4.99), a powerful novel about 11 people thrown together in terrifying circumstances. Martin and his family are on holiday on a Caribbean island, when they are ambushed by freedom fighters. The consequences are devastating; the book short but razor sharp.

Girls with more than one brother may empathise with the title of Peggy Woodford's One Son is Enough (Walker, £6.99). This is the story of twin boys who lead a nomadic life on the mountains and plains of Anatolia. By the sultan's decree, one son is enough for any family, and one of the boys is captured by soldiers and taken to become a slave at the palace. Needless to say, the boys vow to find each other again, and this is the tale of how they do so, despite vile treachery, betrayal and violence. It's an evocative tale, rich in detail of 19th-century Turkey.