Billy Dean is a secret child. He has a beautiful young mother and a father who arrives at night carrying the scents of candles and incense and cigarettes. Birds fly to his window. Mice run out from his walls. His world is a carpet, a bed, pictures of the holy island, and a single locked door. His father fills his mind and his dreams with mysterious tales and memories and dreadful warnings. But then his father disappears, and Billy’s mother brings him out into the world at last. He learns the horrifying story of what was saved and what was destroyed on the day he was born, the day the bombers came to Blinkbonny. The kind butcher, Mr. McCaufrey, and the medium, Missus Malone, are waiting for him. He becomes The Angel Child, one who can heal the living, contact the dead, bring comfort to a troubled world.
Age
Catalog sorted by age group
Tower Of The Five Orders
Colophon Letterford’s life changed overnight when she uncovered Shakespeare’s lost manuscripts. Now the authenticity of those manuscripts is in question and the family publishing business is in danger. In this exciting mystery, thirteen-year-old Colophon travels from Oxford’s lofty Tower of the Five Orders to the dank depths of London’s sewers in her pursuit of truth and honor. But the stakes are high.
The Monster in the Mudball
When Jin’s little brother is kidnapped by the monster Zilombo, Jin teams up with Chief Inspector of Ancient Artifacts Mizz Z on the streets of London to find him and defeat the monster. But Zilombo gains new, frightening powers every time she reawakens. She’s cleverer than ever before and she likes to eat babies. When Jin’s older sister gets distracted along the Oozeburn and forgets to watch their baby brother, Smiler is easy pickings for Zilombo!
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Over The Moon
The Tootings are stuck in 1966! Somebody’s stolen Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and left them behind. But that’s not their biggest problem. Their biggest problem is that Little Harry’s been kidnapped by whoever stole their magical car. There’s only one solution: the Tootings must find the Potts — the family that originally built Chitty. Sharing their combined knowledge of how Chitty works, the families may stand a chance of rescuing Little Harry and finding the most brilliant car in the world. But a fiendish criminal has different plans, ones that involve flying Chitty Chitty Bang Bang to the moon and putting an explosive scheme into action.
The Last Wild
In a world where animals no longer exist, twelve-year-old Kester Jaynes sometimes feels like he hardly exists either. Locked away in a home for troubled children, he’s told there’s something wrong with him. So when he meets a flock of talking pigeons and a bossy cockroach, Kester thinks he’s finally gone crazy. But the animals have something to say. And they need him. The pigeons fly Kester to a wild place where the last creatures in the land have survived. A wise stag needs Kester’s help, and together they must embark on a great journey, joined along the way by an overenthusiastic wolf cub, a military-trained cockroach, a mouse with a ritual for everything, and a stubborn girl named Polly. The animals saved Kester Jaynes. But can Kester save the animals?
Hooey Higgins and the Tremendous Trousers
Have you ever found yourself in a slightly risky situation and thought, What I really need is a pair of super-protective trousers to keep me safe from crocodiles, flying toffee apples, and log-flume malfunctions? Head for Shrimpton-on-Sea, where Hooey, Will, and Twig are working on an ingenious contraption sure to make the world a safer place: the all-new Tremendous Trousers, aka TremTrows! All you do is slip on a pair of yellow sweatpants, stuff them full of bubble wrap, add some soda bottles topped with balloons, and inflate them with gas from a bunch of mints dropped into the soda. What could possibly go wrong? It’s a brilliant invention guaranteed to win the class prize — tickets to the carnival! Shweet!
Half Bad
In modern-day England, witches live alongside humans: White witches, who are good; Black witches, who are evil; and sixteen-year-old Nathan, who is both. Nathan’s father is the world’s most powerful and cruel Black witch, and his mother is dead. He is hunted from all sides. Trapped in a cage, beaten and handcuffed, Nathan must escape before his seventeenth birthday, at which point he will receive three gifts from his father and come into his own as a witch—or else he will die. But how can Nathan find his father when his every action is tracked, when there is no one safe to trust—not even family, not even the girl he loves?
The Great Trouble
Eel, an orphan, and his best friend Florrie must help Dr. John Snow prove that cholera is spread through water, and not poisonous air, when an epidemic sweeps across their London neighborhood in 1854.
Fireborn
When an old, dying wizard steals magic from his twelve-year-old apprentice, Bee, and releases a new, wild magic into the world, another apprentice, Cabbage, sets out to find Bee and try to set things right again.
Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant
Lovable ne’er-do-well Delilah Dirk is an Indiana Jones for the 19th century. She has traveled to Japan, Indonesia, France, and even the New World. Using the skills she’s picked up on the way, Delilah’s adventures continue as she plots to rob a rich and corrupt Sultan in Constantinople. With the aid of her flying boat and her newfound friend, Selim, she evades the Sultan’s guards, leaves angry pirates in the dust, and fights her way through the countryside. For Delilah, one adventure leads to the next in this thrilling and funny installment in her exciting life.