Patch (short for Crosspatch, a nickname given because she was so grumpy as a baby) is the endearing twelve-year-old heroine of Judith Eagle’s The Accidental Stowaway (Faber & Faber 288pp £7.99). Impulsive, reckless and theatrical, she has been abandoned by her mother and passed from relative to relative in early 20th-century England, picking up all sorts of skills as she moves down the social scale, from a Surrey mansion to a Lambeth slum. She knows how to use cutlery properly, but she can also boil beef. All of this comes in handy when she ends up on an ocean liner heading from Liverpool to New York.

Eagle’s novel is an old-fashioned delight. The liner is a social microcosm: lords and ladies swank on the upper decks while in the depths the stokers are worn out by impossibly hard work. Patch wins everyone over. Her thespian nature is central to the plot and its major theme of deception. Many of the characters are not what they seem: false heiresses, stowaways and a cold-eyed man with a silver cane variously aid and threaten.

When it turns out that a criminal family is on board, things become very dangerous indeed. The confines of the ship provide a labyrinthine setting for an immensely satisfying, thrilling narrative with a poignant mother–daughter relationship at its heart. It is also a stirring call for women to live their own lives. This is one of the best children’s books I’ve read all year, for those of ten and up.

Moving forwards in time to the 1980s, and east to Ukraine, Anthony McGowan’s Dogs of the Deadlands (Rock the Boat 302pp £12.99), illustrated by Keith Robinson, deals with a different kind of severed relationship. A little girl, Natasha, is separated from her beautiful white dog, Zoya, when the Chernobyl nuclear power plant fails. Local families must flee, leaving their pets behind.

Zoya survives and mates with a wolf. McGowan follows her pups Misha and Bratan as they negotiate the trials of the wild woods. The interactions between the wolf-dogs are well drawn: Bratan’s legs are deformed as a result of the radiation, but he soon comes into his own, complementing Misha’s more conventional leadership with intelligence and strategic thinking.

The devastation the explosion caused is hauntingly described and touches of Russian folklore are mixed in, with a Baba Yaga-like old lady taking in Misha as he reaches old age. The shattered lives of Chernobyl’s residents are emphasised: Natasha, devastated by her loss, becomes an emotionally stunted adult. There is, though, a lot of hope here too. For readers of eleven upwards.

Sam Thompson’s The Fox’s Tower (Little Island 231pp £9.99) enters the realm of fable. Willow’s father is weird: she watches him out in the garden late at night, talking to animals. When one day he is dragged away by an enormous wolf, she follows, entering a parallel world of talking animals who inhabit a tower in the woods in a mostly happy jumble.

Lurking beneath the surface, however, are horrors. Populism encroaches in the form of a golden lion called Noble (it is not hard to see the shadow of Boris Johnson here), who stirs up the residents against outsiders. Willow and her father must overthrow tyranny, with the help of a friendly family of wolves and a grumpy badger. Thompson creates an eerie atmosphere and writes with precision, clarity and skill. Children aged eleven and upwards will relish it.

S F Said’s Tyger (David Fickling Books 276pp £12.99), illustrated by Dave McKean, also deplores tyranny. William Blake is a powerful presence throughout, the novel’s title coming from his poem of the same name. Set in an alternative Britain, the novel, which has been nine years in the making, asks us to suspend our disbelief by imagining that the slave trade has continued into the 21st century. The empire is still a going concern, but there is not much evidence of population expansion (London is a small town surrounded by fields, which are being enclosed by greedy capitalists).

Adam Alhambra lives in the Soho ghetto, closed off from the rest of the city by a checkpoint. One day he meets a wondrous talking ‘tyger’ and uncovers a cosmic battle that’s been raging for centuries. The tyger is a symbol of creative freedom, and Adam and his friend Zadie must unlock their own powers of perception and understanding before they can defeat the gloriously sinister Sir Mortimer Maldehyde, who may or may not be a demon in human form. Said has produced a compelling, original adventure, also for readers of eleven and older.

Frances Hardinge specialises in complex, alternative worlds where nothing is quite what it seems. In Unraveller (Macmillan Children’s Books 480pp £14.99), the land of Raddith is beset by curses: annoy the wrong person and you might well end up as a heron or, worse, a boat. Kellen, the hero, has an unusual talent: he is able to unravel curses and restore the afflicted to their previous forms. A mysterious one-eyed man (who’s made a pact with a flesh-eating horse) sends Kellen on a mission into the Wilds to unravel the curse of a woman who lures boys and men to their deaths.

Populated by faerie-like creatures, the novel has a rich, unusual texture, and there are many striking details. I won’t forget the skeletal Bookbearers, who record contracts and then hold people to them on pain of death. At heart, Kellen is a detective, discovering the causes of events, and the novel moves powerfully to its conclusion. Its themes of restoration and truth will appeal to readers of around twelve and up.

Also for older children is Berlie Doherty’s accomplished The Haunted Hills (UCLan Publishing 217pp £7.99), which concerns the grief of a teenage boy, Carl, whose best friend, Jack, has died in a car crash. It’s framed as a ghost story: when Carl is taken to the Peak District by his parents to recover from his trauma, he meets a mysterious figure and his dog. But the supernatural theme is really a way to examine how those who have left us remain in our hearts. Carl is a convincing teenager, grappling with feelings of guilt and the fact that his friendship with Jack was being destroyed by a gorgeous, manipulative bully, Julius. Doherty brings the joys of nature to the fore, particularly the pleasures of sheep-herding and hill-walking and bike rides in the woods. Lyrical and thoughtful, The Haunted Hills explores the intensity of adolescent male friendship with panache.

Smriti Prasadam-Halls’s Remembering Our Queen: The Illustrated Story of Queen Elizabeth II (Wren & Rook 63pp £9.99) is an account of Elizabeth II’s life for young children. It emphasises the monarch’s role as a symbol of unity and stability and introduces readers to those now unfashionable ideas of duty, service, discretion and steadfastness. Its summaries of the decades of the Queen’s reign are lively and historically fluent and the illustrations by Kim Geyser and Josie Shenoy shine, the corgis’ collars gleaming as brightly as the crown jewels.