His Dark Materials Book I - The Golden Compass - Philip Pullman (March 16, 2008)
A cracking great read. Talking bears, witches...this is Narnia, right? No. This is much deeper and apologies to C.S. Lewis, much better written. I'd pick this book up to read while I was waiting for internet pages to finish loading and 10 minutes later I'd still be reading it.

Lyra Belacqua, the heroine of the novel, is not a girl for sitting by the fireside with embroidery. She is a half-wild young thing on the edge of womanhood, living with scholars in a University. Through her pluck and then her skill using a mysterious truth-telling device, she travels from London to the North Polar region. The recent movie was good, but they didn't get all of the details right. This book rocks!