THANKS to Shakespeare, we associate fairies with midsummer, but midwinter is just as potent a time for them. The Romans believed that January had two faces, looking back into the past and forward into the future, and it's also the best month for tales of the supernatural. Two delightful new debut novels emphasise this.

There is a long history of fine fiction involving fairy abductions, some of which parents will need to buy second-hand. Antonia Barber's exquisite picture book for 5+, Catkin (illustrated by the great P.J. Lynch), is shamefully out of print, as is a lost classic by William Croft Dickinson called Borrobil (7+), which shares many of The Hobbit's best features. More recently, the subject got a teen make-over with Melissa Marr's sinister and compelling Wicked Lovely, Sally Prue's Cold Tom, and the riotously funny fairies of Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl series. If Stephenie Meyer has made vampires friendlier in Twilight, then these authors have definitely made fairyland darker and more disturbing.

Knife is a return to the old-fashioned warmth of traditional children's fiction, and pure pleasure, although it begins in such a way that its first chapter is likely to put off boys. The heroine, Bryony, is a young fairy living in a huge old oak tree, from which only the bravest hunters dare emerge. Their all-female population is dwindling thanks to predatory crows, foxes, and a dreadful disease called the Silence. Increasingly bereft of magical power, the fairies are most terrified of humans. Yet when the inquisitive, tomboyish Bryony ventures outside she meets a boy who never forgets her - and who will help her to regain the knowledge and power that only the Fairy Queen now hoards.

The plot takes flight as Bryony develops from tomboy into the fairies' bravest hunter, learning how to wield a blade and changing her name to Knife. She gradually uncovers a whole lot more concerning the inter-relations of human and fairy in what becomes a particularly charming, well-drawn romantic thriller. Love, fear, compassion and courage are woven into a magical story that needs a bit more villainy in its chief suspect but which is otherwise highly recommended for 9+ and young teens.

The 13 Treasures boils with the kind of fairy that is far worse than Puck. Tanya is tormented by being able to see the unSeelie - and they in turn make her levitate, get blamed for mess and persecute her relentlessly. Forbidden to speak of them and threatened with the loss of all her memories, she is at her wits' end when she is sent to live with her eccentric grandmother in an old house in the country.

Fifty years ago, a girl vanished in the woods near by. Fabian, the caretaker's son, has family reasons for trying to find out the reason why, as his grandfather was the last person to see the missing Morwenna. When Tanya and Fabian see Morwenna, apparently unchanged, in the forbidden woods, they set out to solve the mystery and enter into an even more dangerous world. Fans of The Spiderwick Chronicles will like this, but it's actually rather better, being less winsome and closer to the utterly brilliant Cold Tom, Prue's variation on the story of Tam Lin. Unlike Prue's creations, these fairies are neither beautiful nor seductive, just destructive and dangerous for lonely, sensitive children. What is particularly enjoyable is the way normal pubescent stroppiness and weird behaviour is, in this case, perfectly explained by the heroine's double-vision of the fairy and mortal worlds. What could be more cheering to curl up with in this miserable month?

Knife (9+) by R.J.Anderson
Orchard, £5.99 Buy the book

The 13 Treasures (10+) by Michelle Harrison
Simon & Schuster, £6.99 Buy the book

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