(De Fontein, 2001, 158 pages)

Rules of the Game is a historical novel for young readers, set in the Middle Ages, about an arranged marriage between two noble teenagers, which proceeds according to strict, patriarchal rules. After all, in the fourteenth century marriage is not a question of love, but of convenience, and so as a child Marjorie van de Witborg is already destined for Allard van Goudheuvel. We hear from both of them in turn, and they are quite candid about their feelings. When they get married, they hardly know each other.

(De Fontein, 2003, 512 pages)

Wolfsroedel (Wolf Pack) is an impressive young people’s book: well written by a gifted author, it has a strong narrative that is relevant, originally structured and abounding in ideas. It is a complex, grown-up novel, a frame-work story in which a Romanian son talks about the tales that his father, Ion Brebu, once told him at the fireside. It’s a simple beginning, but Father’s own breathtaking story about the band of robbers to which he and two of his friends belonged in their youth pushes the narrow framework into the background, and the reader is drawn into a world as real as it is surreal.

(De Fontein, 2005, 505 pages)

Rarely has a book for young adults been so eagerly anticipated as Tricks of the Trade, the third book by the popular young author Floortje Zwigtman. She understands better than anyone else that adolescents aren’t looking for a neat book of instructions for the future. These are stories that tell it like it is, historical novels about surviving in conditions where the laws and morals of polite society no longer seem to apply.

(De Fontein, 2010, 621 pages)

‘The story I want to tell needs time and space,’ Floortje Zwigtman said in an interview to mark the publication of Tegenspel (Countermoves, 2007), the second part in her Dickensian trilogy ‘Een groene bloem’ (A Green Flower). Fortunately, she allowed herself that time and space: Spiegeljongen (Mirror Boy), the long-awaited 608-page final volume in the series, is now ready to be devoured.