Thirteen-year-old Helen is not entirely sure she is looking forward to spending the next six months aboard the Karluk, a ship headed on an Arctic expedition. But with the recent death of her father, it is the only work her seamstress mother can find. Helen's ten-year-old brother Michael is delighted to be off on a real adventure, but neither he nor Helen realizes just how extraordinary this trip will be. The ship's hard-bitten captain, Robert Bartlett (who brought the explorer Robert Peary to the North Pole), must use all his seafaring skill when the Arctic Ocean begins an early freeze-over and the ship becomes trapped in the ice. But will his knowledge of the unpredictable and treacherous Arctic be enough to save his passengers?

In the pages of her diary, Helen records the fate of the crew and her family as they leave the ship and try to make their way across the shifting ice floes, through blinding blizzards and past hungry polar bears to safety on solid land. And as the trek proceeds, Helen learns a few things about her family, about friendship and about a remarkable strength she never knew she possessed.

Based on true events surrounding the ill-fated Canadian Arctic Expedition of 1913, Trapped In Ice is a riveting, fast-paced adventured peopled with intriguing characters and set in the marvellous, brutal world of ice and snow.

It is 1915, and Canada is embroiled in the First World War. Most of the battles may be taking place across the ocean, but Halifax is an exciting place to be - its streets are crowded with sailors and soldiers and its harbour is giving temporary berth to warships. It is, perhaps, too exciting, decides William's mother. She has noticed that her thirteen-year-old son is hanging out with a rough crowd and has picked up some dangerous hobbies. What better way to distract the young man than to send him to quiet Baddeck, Nova Scotia, where she has managed to get him a summer job working on the estate of the famous scientist and inventor, Alexander Graham Bell?

William is horrified by the idea of a summer spent working for some batty old man on a sleepy country estate. Until, that is, he discovers Bell is working on his own war effort - the development of a 'hydrofoil' boat that skims across the surface of the ocean and therefore avoids attacks from the deadly German submarines that are sinking ships all along Canada's coast. William wants nothing more than to work with Bell and the engineers on the boat, but why does everyone try to keep him away from the project? And what is everyone so afraid of? Before he knows it, William is caught up in a spine-tingling - and deadly - mystery that only he can solve.