really make it as a secret agent? This swift-paced, lively debut balances down-to-earth believability with wish-fulfilment fun. Geraldine McCaughreanâs The Supreme Lie (Usborne) is a more complex and stretching book, with the odd upsetting element, so itâs best suited to tougher readers of 10-plus. It follows Gloria, a teenage maid who finds herself impersonating a vanished head of state in Afalia, a country overwhelmed by floods. When Gloriaâs desperate efforts to help the suffering population come up against the machinations of Afalian propagandists (elegantly evoked by Keith Robinsonâs newspaper-style illustrations), discovery looms perilously close in this thought-provoking, poignant, blackly funny novel.