Kensington, 1899. 

Cosima Unfortunate has spent all her life at the Home for Unfortunate Girls – a school where any disabled children, or children deemed different, are sent. 

It is there that Cosima meets her friends - Pearl, Mary and Diya - and together they mastermind a series of daring pranks to pass the time and outwit and embarrass The Stains, their unsavoury guardians at the home. 

When Lord Francis Fitzroy, the explorer behind the Empire Exhibition, visits the home willing to adopt the girls his motives are unclear. Determined to find out more the girls plot the biggest heist of their life and Cosima finds herself drawing ever closer to discovering the one secret she's always wanted to know - the truth about her parents... 

Laura Noakes is a disabled writer and historian from Bedfordshire. She has written articles for Disability in Kidlit and Kettle Mag and her poetry has been published in Scrittura Magazine. 

She was awarded her doctorate in legal history in 2021 and before devoting her time to writing full-time worked at the best-named museum in Scotland, The Devil's Porridge. Laura lives in beautiful Cumbria with her husband, Connor, and her mischievous cats, Scout and Sonny. 

Cosima Unfortunate Steals a Star is her debut novel. 

Cosima Unfortunate Steals a Star is available to purchase now published by Harper Collins Children Books 

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