Pigeons, with their ‘magic bonelight and cloudweight’, are at the centre of Katya Balen’s lyrical and heartfelt Letters from the Upside (Bloomsbury 251pp £12.99). Young Con, who’s always thought of them as unappealing members of the cityscape he inhabits, is surprised to discover the beauty, power and intelligence of homing pigeons. He lives in a high-rise flat, surrounded by poverty and violence, but on the building’s roof sits Mr Williams with his cage of birds.

Communication and connectivity are the major themes, and shy Con is astonished when he realises he can send letters via these extraordinary beings, whose resilience and doggedness serve as a wake-up call for his own life. His mother is always working, his father abandoned them and Con is threatened and bullied by older boys at street level. He finds solace and hope hundreds of feet above. If only he could find his father via these feathered messengers, he thinks, and sends them off into the sky. Balen’s prose is poetic and thoughtful, and she eschews mawkishness while tugging at the heartstrings. Readers of eleven and up will find their minds soaring.

How we love an 18th-century highwayman, especially a gentleman who robs the rich with politesse and a quip on his curling lips. Penny Chrimes taps into this rich vein in Hero the Highway Girl (Firefly Press 251pp £8.99), adding a layer of social conscience. Hero is the sole heiress to the Devine family, who have acquired power and money through generations of greed. Their crest is a devil crushing an angel – they’re not subtle. Hero’s grandmother wants her to marry someone suitably wealthy, but Hero wants to be a highwaygirl. And so, just before she’s due to be betrothed, she runs away and ends up with Gentleman Jack and his beautiful black horse, Diablo.

Chrimes leaves us in no doubt as to the dangers of this life of crime: the gallows are ever present in the background. Jack knows he risks his life every time he saddles up and doesn’t understand this silly toff’s motivation: all he wants to do is start a stud farm. But Hero is determined to break out of the constricting roles assigned to her. Featuring stolen jewels, sundered families, a hideous lawyer, prison breaks and last-minute dashes across haunted heaths, this atmospheric, exciting novel will delight readers of ten and up.

Also chafing against the roles society expects of them are the girls in Emma Carroll’s Dracula and Daughters (Faber & Faber 314pp £7.99). The book is set in an alternative 19th-century England, where vampires are decidedly real and the people of Temstown tremble at the prospect of another attack. When an actress, Elsie Irving, dies in mysterious circumstances, returning as a fanged menace, Mina must do what she can to stop the city being infected. There are plenty of other such nods to previous books: Dr John Polidori, who won’t let girls learn medicine, is the head of the Surgeons’ Guild, while Lucy Westenra makes an appearance as the author of a treatise. When it turns out that Mina is descended from old Dracula himself, things rapidly change: can she hunt herself? Children’s books ought to move towards restitution and renewal, and throughout, Carroll shows that it’s better to try to heal than to destroy. Readers of ten and up will find much to enjoy in this unusual take on bloodsucking horrors.

P G Bell twists a different kind of legend in The Big Bad Wolf Murder (Usborne 244pp £7.99), which posits an annual Hunger Games-style institutionalised battle between wolves and humans. Little Red Riding Hood is supposed to have begun as an initiation tale for seamstresses, picking their way over paths full of needles; this 21st-century version taps into anxieties about surveillance and entertainment. When a famous wolf is murdered and a bottle of poison found in Ruby’s locker, she and her young wolf friend race to clear her name while the press and the police hunt them. Mysteries deepen and corruption is endemic. Bell writes with sparky energy and Ruby’s resourceful nature will appeal to readers of ten and up.

The playwright William Davenant was reportedly William Shakespeare’s godson; he also liked to put it about that he was Shakespeare’s illegitimate son. Maz Evans, in The Last Bard (Chicken House 306pp £12.99), provides Davenant with a line of descendants, leading up to the present-day Will. He and his mother live with a ghastly uncle who sends them off to clear out Will’s grandfather’s flat. There, Will finds a book of Shakespeare’s plays, whose characters come alive when he opens it. His inherited mission is to set these characters free into the real world; at the same time, he must fix the complex problems (based on the plays) that beset the residents of the building, while fending off the depredations of a developer, Egeus. Although the Shakespearean characters don’t quite convince – Lady Macbeth, in particular, is less murderous harridan than brisk businesswoman – there is enough fizz and humour here to keep young readers happy. And if it leads them onwards to the real Bard himself, then so much the better.

Finally, two books for older readers swim into the deep waters of folklore. Curtis Jobling’s Wyrdwood (Fox & Ink Books 370pp £8.99) is set on a remote island where ancient nature spirits must be propitiated. Kiki’s father, a horror writer, meets a strange woman called Fay in the woods. An eerie sense surrounds the town and instead of getting excited about Christmas, the schoolchildren, pale and shadow-eyed, draw pictures of weird stick figures. Jobling knows his motifs inside out and writes with sinister aplomb, expertly winding up the tension towards a gruesome climax, with plenty of genuine chills along the way. Definitely one for teens.

Also on the spookier side is Finbar Hawkins’s Ghost (Zephyr 226pp £14.99), which intertwines the narratives of three girls from three different time periods. Aine, in Britain of AD 60, hunts boars and refuses to be conquered by the Romans; 18th-century Sarah’s mother is a cook in a big house; Marie, in the 21st century, dreams of Celtic rituals. A dark force is stalking the girls, who all demonstrate psychic powers. Aine’s family is destroyed; Sarah becomes a witch, or cunning woman; and Marie has a kind of nervous breakdown, while also realising that stemming the tide of darkness is her responsibility. Hawkins’s writing is gorgeous – ‘between our figures the tall tower stretches back towards the trees. It reminds me of an ancient sundial, drawing the shifts of time across the land’ – and this tense, glittering novel will suit readers of twelve and up, who will have to read it by the fireside. Just don’t look in the mirror afterwards or you may see shadows that shouldn’t be there.