In Poppy’s Angel, Poppy’s dad is still in prison. Her mum has rushed back to Poland to look after her seriously ill mother, and Poppy is sent to stay with her friend Jude. But Poppy feels stifled. At times like this she needs Angel, the joker among her friends – dodgy, wild, can’t read or write much, yet bursting with energy and one of life’s natural wits. But Angel, like Poppy, feels a bit orphaned, and has joined a gang.

One evening she goes to her empty flat and finds blood stains on the floor. She follows their trail into the kitchen. There, under the table and bleeding from an arm wound, she finds Angel. How has he been hurt? Why hasn’t he rung 999? Who else is involved?

Poppy’s mission to help Angel seems doomed to failure when Angel tries to escape the police on the roof of a tower block. And then her dad, Big Frank, now in an open prison, needs saving as well as he plans a return to his dangerous past.

Rachel Billington’s dramatic follow-up to Poppy’s Hero features two opposing kinds of London kids, with Poppy straddling the gulf between them as she and her friends are drawn into a strange, unimaginable world. It also tells two stories as Angel and Poppy lead some eccentric new friends in the chase to save Big Frank from flying out of England into big trouble.

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  Poppy's Hero