Newes From the Dead
Bodley Head, £8.99; 320pp Buy the book here

The Nostradamus Prophecy
Doubleday, £12.99; 480pp Buy the book here

Bearkeeper
Marion Lloyd, £5.99; 256pp Buy the book here

Historical fiction has been around for children since the days of Henty and Haggard, though most parents of today probably encountered it in their own childhood through the wonderful novels of Rosemary Sutcliffe, Henry Treece and Geoffrey Trease. Yet I feel that the kind of fiction in which historical events are baked in is a worrying trend. Often, research takes the place of true imagination, and genuine works of art such as Sally Gardener's The Red Necklace get lumped in with the Horrible Histories.

Perhaps I'm just cross, having just waded through some abysmal novels about, respectively, King Alfred, Robin Hood and yet another Viking slave girl. Enough! But Newes from the Dead, The Nostradamus Prophecy and Bearkeeper are another matter.

Newes takes a real-life case which has already been fictionalised in Iain Pears's adult novel, An Instance of a Fingerpost, about an Oxfordshire girl who was unjustly hanged, and resuscitated. Anne, a young servant girl in 1650, is accused of murdering her baby after being raped by the heir of a powerful nobleman.

When the novel opens, she is in absolute darkness, terrified that she is in Hell. The 17th-century doctors examining her body are quarrelling over whether to dissect her or not. As she lies there, her mind provides us with the story of her life - its hard work, superstitions, pleasures and injustices. Meanwhile, her faint signs of life have you on tenterhooks, wondering whether these will be noticed in time. It's a first-rate debut, and Anne's story, handled with skill and passion, will be hard for anyone of 11+ to put down.

Teresa Breslin has hit a winning streak since her Renaissance thriller, The Medici Seal, and The Nostradamus Prophecy is even better. While Elizabeth I is on the English throne, France is riven by the rival Catholic and Huguenot courts. Melisande and her beautiful sister have been taught music by their father, and play for Charles and his mother Catherine de Medici; they hear Nostradamus's mysterious, terrifying prophecy of doom and bloodshed.

But it's only when Melisande's sister and her fiancé are murdered by an evil count and she has to flee for Languedoc that she learns more. A destiny awaits her, if she has the courage to accept it - but she may die if she does.

The novel goes at a rollicking pace, with the usual features of romance: a heroine who disguises herself as a boy, an evil lord, a treacherous Italian - kept sympathetic and plausible. Melchior, the sexy leopard-keeper who saves our heroine, will have many girls of 12+ in raptures.

The Nostradamus Prophecy is especially praiseworthy for dramatising a period of European history which children might not normally encounter, even if it is a little too easy to guess what will happen next.

Slightly younger boys of 9+ will love Josh Lacey's Bearkeeper. A poor young boy resents his mother's new partner, dreams of his famous knife-fighting father, and travels to Elizabethan London. Here, as so often in tales of this kind, he finds his way to the Globe Theatre and becomes involved in a Shakespeare play - but that isn't all. For Pip also finds an ally in a female bear; and it is in describing the cruel torments inflicted on bears, and the developing trust between the two, that Lacey hits his stride.

Pip is someone that every boy will identify with, and the scene in which his fantasy fights against enemies bears fruit in a real-life knife battle is first-rate. Like C.S. Lewis, Lacey addresses his readers in informative asides that some will find reassuring and others irritating. But the humour and wisdom of his tale will win him new fans. All these books stand on their own feet as novels of genuine charm and character whose period setting is worn lightly.

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