“I was astonished by Nicola Garrard's On The Edge.” I’m absolutely thrilled that Anne Fine chose #OnTheEdge🔥for the @Booktrust top authors and illustrators’ best books of 2026 round-up 🥰🤩 @oldbarnbooks See all the choices here: www.booktrust.org.uk/book-recomme...

Thank you Nicola Chester for writing this important article for Countryfile Magazine. Lots of people - including politicians and policy makers - don't know about transport inequality - so read this! (And thank you for your praise for #OnTheEdge) www.countryfile.com/people/opini...

I’m lucky to be invited into schools to spend time with bright, inquisitive, optimistic & passionate children & teenagers. If you ever get a chance to listen to young people, you’ll know that the future is in safe hands. The next generation have got this! 🥰

“recommend attempting to read it in a Devonshire accent - if that's available to you” SPOT ON, my lover! You give her a try! 😂 Really happy to read two more 5⭐️ reviews for #ontheedge🔥 Thank you lovely readers (including a superstar author)!🤩🥰 @oldbarnbooks.bsky.social

A reminder that my acclaimed YA/Crossover novels are TRIED & TESTED at getting teenagers reading!🤩😁Order your teenager a copy in time for Christmas. #OntheEdge❤️🔥#nationalyearofreading2026 #TeenReads #CarnegieMedalForWriting2026 @oldbarnbooks.bsky.social www.oldbarnbooks.com

Want to teach an acclaimed YA novel about working class coastal kids? Download a FREE #OnTheEdge secondary school Education Pack at nicola-garrard.co.uk ✅ 6-week SofW ✅ Faster Read strategies ✅ character studies ✅ creative writing ✅ discussion prompts ✅ extension tasks

I’m SKIPPING! #OnTheEdge🔥 is in the Financial Times BEST BOOKS OF 2025 list. Thank you!⭐️🌟💫✨ If you have an angry teenage rebel-without-a-cause kid at home, they might just like a copy of #OnTheEdge. #NEETS & #grommets especially welcome👊🌊🏄 @oldbarnbooks.bsky.social

I love this review for #OnTheEdge 🥰 Do you have a free-thinking rebel-without-a-cause teenager at home? This book might just be up their street!❤️ @oldbarnbooks.bsky.social

When a bookish mum gets this from her 15yo son’s secondary school. 🥹😍 Note to self: don’t immediately moan about the clothes and wet towel on his bedroom floor when he gets in. 😂😊😁

At my adult education Spanish lesson yesterday, and one of my classmates whips out a copy of #OntheEdge for me to sign for his grandkid’s Christmas present! Que emocionante! 🥰😊

"Published authors are always back at square one the minute their book is released, and find themselves on the old familiar rollercoaster." @nmgarrard.bsky.social author of On the Edge, shares her experience of publishing a third novel. Read: www.writersandartists.co.uk/advice/third...

I really appreciate my publisher putting #OnTheEdge in Pen & Inc magazine for all the lovely school and county librarians to see! Thank you!📚🥰❤️🔥 #cilip #carnegies #schoollibrarian #indiepublishing #countylibrary #librariansofinstagram

So this happened on Monday and I couldn’t be happier!🥳❤️🔥Somehow I forgot to post about it on Bluesky. #OnTheEdge @oldbarnbooks.bsky.social

#OnTheEdge has been spotted in Morningside Library, Edinburgh!🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🥰❤️🔥 @oldbarnbooks.bsky.social

Why is @knightsofbooks.bsky.social. Closing? It has so many prize winners & dominates long/shortlists every year in every major children’s award. I’m reading the brilliant #heretoslay by Radhika Sanghani today, on the @uklitassociation.bsky.social book awards 11-14+ longlist. What’s going on?🥺

“I read this beautiful book on holiday and couldn't put it down.” 😁I’m delighted to see more 5 star reviews for #OnTheEdge popping up, especially when they praise its beauty AND unputdownability (is that a word?😂)❤️🔥🥰 THANK YOU READERS! Keep ’em coming ⭐️🌟💫✨ @oldbarnbooks.bsky.social

There are now signed copies of #OnTheEdge🔥at The Book Nook in Hove! 😁🥰🤩This specialist indie children’s bookshop has a huge collection of YA & children’s books. Check it out! Thank you @booknookhove.bsky.social for the warm welcome!❤️ #ukya #bookshop #Brightonandhove @oldbarnbooks.bsky.social

I love it when “oldies” love my books!🥰😊🔥I want #OnTheEdge to be the kind of book that young people read again later in life and see a whole different story! @oldbarnbooks.bsky.social #yacrossover #ukya #bookrecs #booksbooksbooks #youngadultfiction

This thread.. thank you, thank you @nmgarrard.bsky.social. If you like the sound of this, do please read, buy, borrow, listen, gift, review. These forgotten women & their ghosts will love you for it, as will I!

#GhostsOfTheFarm by @nicolawriting.bsky.social is an outstanding fusion of memoir and creative historical non-fiction. It is tender and sentiment-filled, without ever being sentimental, and strikes a deeply painful, elegiac note without losing hope…

So @nmgarrard.bsky.social has read my book, & given me the most astonishingly lovely review. Had to have a little sit down & a cry. Her writing & voice is just brilliant, crystalline & vivid. So oh wow, this means everything.

I had a FABULOUS day at The King’s School in Hove 🥰Thank you so much for inviting me to lead a full day of assemblies & creative writing workshops across KS3 & KS4! We read, we wrote, we debated, we learned about POSITIVE protest …😍 #OnTheEdge #nicolagarrardauthor @oldbarnbooks.bsky.social #UKYA

Check out my @campyafest.bsky.social campfire chat! 🏕️🔥🥰#OnTheEdge @oldbarnbooks.bsky.social campya.org/campfire-cha...

Teachers & school librarians! If your school is north of Nottingham, or abroad, you can book an author e-visit with me! Here’s what Literacy School of the Year 2025 @SharplesSchool said about my e-visit to talk about #OnTheEdge, protest & extremism. 😁🔥📚🥰 @oldbarnbooks.bsky.social

Happy #bookshopday! I popped into the gorgeous @chocolitbooks.bsky.social in Clapham & was delighted to find the multitalented Gareth P Jones playing his music. There are now signed copies of #ontheedge at Chocolit ❤️🔥Thank you, Martina!🥰 @oldbarnbooks.bsky.social @booksaremybag.bsky.social

Reading helps me to relax! Even ten minutes of reading each day is enough to boost my mood. Don’t forget, children and animals love to be read aloud to! I’m taking 10 to read to Harold the sheep!🐏📚🥰 #Take10ToRead #WorldMentalHealthDay @oldbarnbooks.bsky.social

Know your history! My recommendations for #BlackHistoryMonth are David Olusoga’s sweeping history #BlackAndBritish & Samuel Selvon’s #TheLonelyLondoners. Olusoga’s chilling Preface, about the 70s & 80s racism & ethno-nationalism in his childhood, reads like an account of today.

Exciting #booksky post, all in just over a week! All subjects so close to my heart: #TheEmpathyFix, #NeurodivergentbyNature, #LoveAngerBetrayal, #OntheEdge, #Fenwomen & #Village added to my pile of books tbr, that will inform, enlighten, move & enrich my life, writing & understanding. Books eh? 1/4

It’s been a bumper Ceptember! 🍄‍🟫Scroll through the photos to see what I made with these penny buns (AKA cep, porcini, boletus) We eat like kings for free! Super yellow eggs thanks to my garden hens. 🥰

Thank you Midhurst Rother College for inviting me to visit your school😁. It was great talking to Yr 9 about the history of protest & the dangers of extremism. I loved discussing the causes of riots with your A-Level Politics students. Teenagers are really engaged in the issues in #OnTheEdge!🥰

“When I eventually encounter the gang, I'm faced with a 14-year-old girl in pink leggings and Crocs.” Interesting how the BBC journalist codes socioeconomic background without naming it. Now let’s talk about the 1,243 youth centres closed since 2010.😠 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

“A comment on the state of Britain worthy of Dickens … a major tour de force and I cannot recommend it enough.” I love this very detailed and thoughtful ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️review of #OnTheEdge on Amazon. Thank you, Piers! 🥰 @oldbarnbooks

I was thrilled today to receive an early copy of Nicola Chester’s beautiful new book, #GhostsOfTheFarm. The Preface is stunning - I can’t wait to read the rest of it. Thank you, @chelseagreen 🌱❤️ #ruralhistory #sustainability #environment #womeninfarming #farminghistory

Thanks to Phil Hewitt, Arts Editor at @sussex_express @Sussex_World for the interview - and a shout-out for my Chichester Literary Society event in January 2026! ❤️🔥 www.sussexexpress.co.uk/news/coastal...

I LOVE getting photos of #OnTheEdge in its natural habitat - a sunny, sandy beach. ❤️🔥🌊🏄 This copy looks like it might have been handled by chippy and/or ice-creamy fingers! Even better!😂

More book signing in the Old Barn! Teachers don’t give lines as punishment anymore but signing 70+ copies makes me feel like a kid doing lines, except instead of “I must write neatly” it’s “Nicola Garrard”! 😂Buy your signed copy of #ontheedge from @oldbarnbooks Thank you!😁🥰

This book got me! 🤩🐴❤️#ahorsenamedsky by Rosanne Parry is set in the US with talking mustangs…sounds sentimental, right? NOT AT ALL! It’s brilliant. I SUSPENDED ALL DISBELIEF, handed in my adult reader card & became a child again. Get this book for the 7-13yos in your life⭐️💫

Here are our first book reviews for April. Thank you Lisa Hagan, Jayne Truran, Nicola Garrard, @stephenconnor.bsky.social @edfinch.bsky.social Helen Dearing, Theresa Gooda and @jobowers.bsky.social for your reviews this week: justimagine.co.uk/childrens-bo...

Written by UKLA Award winner, Nicola Garrard, On the Edge follows Rhys and his brothers, struggling to get by in an off-season tourist resort. When their home is threatened, Rhys resorts to drastic measures to protect his family. Members, repost to be in with a chance to win #lucky13th

Here are #TheEmpathyFix, a radical rethink of how we perceive poverty, & break the cycle from @keetieroelen.bsky.social, & #OntheEdge, a YA crossover novel on young lives & the dangers of rural hardship & inequality, from Nicola Garrard 2/4 #booksky

I was so happy when I was sent this photo, taken in a bookshop in Exeter! #ontheedge, next to the wonderful #kingofnothing surrounded by the bestselling YA post-apocalyptic, speculative, romance, fantasy and romantasy😂 #ukya #trendingteens @oldbarnbooks

they are felled time & time again by societal unfairness. A genuine page turner, stunningly written, with a message both from history & for our time. An essential beach read for kindness, & when thinking about booking your holidays, for any age. I loved these tender, angry, seasalt-on-wounds boys!

Raw, urgent, lyrical, funny & full of angry power & love @nmgarrard.bsky.social has created richly authentic characters & lives we rarely hear about, but should. Adolescent, working class boys in rural & seaside towns, pushed to the edge; unsupported by a system that disposes of them once used 2/3

As school librarian, I’m lucky I’m alive to the utter brilliance of YA/crossover fiction (do try it! It keeps you in touch, current, fresh-thinking & boy, it’s where it’s at!) This is one of the very best I’ve read for our time #OntheEdge @nmgarrard.bsky.social @oldbarnbooks.bsky.social #booksky 1/3

Subscribe to the excellent Caught by the River @caughtbytheriver.bsky.social newsletter for a chance to WIN one of three copies of #ontheedge😁🤩🥰 @oldbarnbooks.bsky.social www.caughtbytheriver.net/explore/topi...

On the Edge has hit the shores of Jersey! 🔥❤️😁

I had an absolutely brilliant night at the beautiful @petworthbooks with my wonderful publisher, Ruth Huddleston @oldbarnbooks We celebrated #OntheEdge in style! Thank you so much everyone for coming!🥳🤩🥰

Teachers! There’s a FREE teaching pack for #OnTheEdge available to download on the @oldbarnbooks website! It’s a 6-week unit of work, complete with slides, handouts, notes and extension activities for students aged 13 to 19. 🔥🤩 www.oldbarnbooks.com/products/on-...

Read my guest blog for @CILIPinfo’s Youth Libraries Group, about the experiences of rural working-class children in school, and how librarians are creating an inclusive space that transforms life opportunities.📚🔥#ontheedge @oldbarnbooks www.cilip.org.uk/blogpost/163...

I had the pleasure of chatting to @EddieNestor today on @BBCRadioLondon 🥰 Listen from 1:21:30 #ontheedge @oldbarnbooks www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...