Hard by a Great Forest has all the ingredients of a dark and twisty fairy tale: A mysterious disappearance, a postwar city teeming with danger, a scavenger hunt, riddles, a road trip, escaped zoo animals, an orphan and a title echoing the first line of Hansel and Gretel. It’s loosely based on author Leo Vardiashvili’s life – he lived through Georgia’s civil war and immigrated to the U.K. as a refugee in the mid-’90s.

Copies of this title are available through the Babcock Public Library