Fleeing dark forces and unfounded accusations across Europe in the years between World Wars, a young man named Vango has been in danger for as long as he can remember. He has spent his life running along rooftops, fleeing to isolated islands, and evading capture across Russia, Paris, New York, and Italy. Narrow escapes, near misses, and a dash of romantic intrigue will rivet adventurous teens to their seats as Vango continues to unravel the mysteries of his past.
Neil and Liz Maloney have a secret: Their father is the keeper of the Weatherbox, a magical phone booth that rings four times a year, signaling the changing of the seasons. But this summer when the family gathers to send off the season, the phone doesn’t ring and autumn does not arrive. Instead a mysterious tourist of magic shows up at their doorstep, along with two nonsensical hags and one cat-shaped bog beast.
Journeyman toymaker Stefan Drosselmeyer is recruited by his mysterious cousin, Christian, to find a mythical nut that will save Boldavia’s princess and his own kidnapped father from a fanatical Mouse Queen and her seven-headed Mouse Prince, who have sworn to destroy the Drosselmeyer family.
Every October Cara and her family become inexplicably and unavoidably accident-prone. Some years it’s bad, like the season when her father died, and some years it’s just a lot of cuts and scrapes. This accident season—when Cara, her ex-stepbrother, Sam, and her best friend, Bea, are 17—is going to be a bad one. But not for the reasons they think. Cara is about to learn that not all the scars left by the accident season are physical: There’s a long-hidden family secret underneath the bumps and bruises. This is the year Cara will finally fall desperately in love, when she’ll start discovering the painful truth about the adults in her life, and when she’ll uncover the dark origins of the accident season—whether she’s ready or not.
Claude and his best friend, Sir Bobblysock (who is both a sock and very bobbly), go to the city for the very first time. They have tea in a cafe, go shopping, and visit a museum. It’s a delightful but ordinary day, until Claude accidentally foils a robbery, then heals a whole waiting room full of patients.
Fifteen-year-old Frances is sent to her aunt’s house for the summer to escape difficulties at home. Soon she meets Peter, a man unlike anyone she has ever known. Peter is a messenger—but his messages never bring good news.
The struggle for human survival continues following an alien invasion of Earth as twelve-year-old Sam and his fellow resistance members join a mission to disable the invading Voidborn technology in Tokyo, but something is coming, something even worse than the Voidborn.
Fourteen-year-old social outcast Charlie Han, known as “the short Chinese kid” at school, searches for a talent to improve his popularity, but when he discovers skateboarding, much to the disapproval of his overprotective mother, he also uncovers a huge family secret.
Stella Park (Spark for short) has found summer work cataloging historical archives in John Stone’s remote and beautiful house in Suffolk, England. She wasn’t quite sure what to expect, and her uncertainty about living at Stowney House only increases upon arriving: what kind of people live in the twenty-first century without using electricity, telephones, or even a washing machine? Additionally, the notebooks she’s organizing span centuries—they begin in the court of Louis XIV in Versailles—but are written in the same hand. Something strange is going on for sure, and Spark’s questions are piling up.
Told in their two voices, Nat, who believes his brother set a bomb in a London market, and Charlie, whose mother was killed in the explosion, team up to infiltrate and stop the organization responsible for the act of terrorism.