Welcome to Franklin's Emporium - the department store where there's magic on every floor! When Alex is sent to Golden Bay for the summer she just wants be left in peace to read her books. Unfortunately, her cousin Maisie has other ideas and makes Alex go shopping for some white lace gloves. And when you are shopping at Franklin's Emporium, what you end up buying isn't quite what you expected! Funny, exciting or a little bit spooky, Black Cats are fast-paced stories with short chapters and illustrations throughout. Perfect stepping stones to reading confidence. Gill does a great job writing a pacey and exciting story in so few pages, setting up a framework for the series and introducing her main characters. We really feel for Alex as she wrestles, sometimes literally, with the intractable problem of her mean cousin and the unpredictable magic of the gloves.