Material appropriate for intermediate age groups
When thirteen-year-old Mascha is sent to her grandparents’ for the summer, she spends her days bored and lonely at a nearby playground. There she meets Julia and Max, two young siblings who are incredibly shy and withdrawn. Mascha soon begins to suspect that they are being physically abused by their father, a prominent member of their small community. She tells her grandparents and the authorities, but they all refuse to believe her.
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.
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.
Fourteen-year-old Emily would rather spend her days dreaming of adventures and wandering the moors, but when her father falls sick, and her sister Charlotte is sent away to school reality comes crashing in.
For years, a cruel wizard named Ash has been trapped in a magical prison-but now, she is poised to escape and get her revenge by unleashing an army of vicious monsters. Only three stand in her way: Sam, the apprentice of the wizard who imprisoned her, Starback, Sam’s steadfast dragon companion, and Tamrin, a runaway wizard apprentice. Tamrin and Sam have only just met-but neither of them can deny the strange force that links them. They must discover the secret behind their connection in order to defeat Ash and protect everything they hold dear.
Eleven-year-old Danny O’Neill has never been what you’d call adventurous. But when he wakes the morning after a storm to find his house empty, his parents gone, and himself able to hear the thoughts of a dying tree, he has no choice but to set out to find answers. He soon learns that the enigmatic Book of Storms holds the key to what he seeks . but unraveling its mysteries won’t be easy. If he wants to find his family, he’ll have to face his worst fears and battle terrifyingly powerful enemies, including the demonic Sammael himself.
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.
London, 1842. Wild Boy, master detective and former freak-show performer, and Clarissa, circus acrobat and troublemaker, are the secret last hope of a city beset by horror. A poisoner stalks the streets, leaving victims mad with terror.
Through a series of strange coincidences, orphan Edie finds herself at Knight’s Haddon, a stately boarding school for girls. But Edie is not just another student–under normal circumstances, she could never afford to go to boarding school. She’s been sent to Knight’s Haddon by her art-dealer uncle to investigate the disappearance of a precious crystal bird that belongs to his secretive client’s daughter. Anastasia, a Russian royal, has a fragile disposition and a melodramatic bent–or so the headmistress and all the other girls say. Edie’s assignment is not only to find the missing glass bird; it’s to befriend the troubled blueblood and keep a watchful eye on her.
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.