Fiction genre
In 1870s London, a ten-year-old orphan girl, Birdie AcAdam, becomes the apprentice to Alfred, who traps monsters for a living.Birdie lures the bogles out of their lairs with her sweet songs, and Alfred kills them before they kill her. On the mean streets of Victorian England, hunting bogles is actually less dangerous work than mudlarking for scraps along the vile river Thames (see glossary!).
The once highly in-demand detective Alan Knightley has just woken up after an unexplained incident kept him asleep for four years. While he was out cold, his son, Darkus, took it upon himself to read of all his dad’s old cases, and he’s learned a lot about the art of detection. It’s a good thing too—because suddenly the duo find themselves caught up in a crazy conspiracy that involves a group of villainous masterminds (who keep appearing and then vanishing), some high-speed car chases (that will have everyone fastening their seat belts), and a national, bestselling book with the power to make people do terrible, terrible things. But because Alan is still suffering the effects of his coma, he tends to, well, fall asleep at the worst possible moments, Meaning that young Darkus might just have to solve this mystery by himself.
When Michael Malone saves a dog, he discovers that he has paranormal abilities, which bring him to the attention of a secret organization, but he plans to use the ability to find out what happened to his father, who mysteriously vanished three years earlier, and save his new friend, Freya.
In nineteenth-century England, a boy is about to discover a mysterious mechanical world he may never escape. Ten-year-old Jack Foster has stepped through a doorway and into quite a different London. Londinium is a smoky, dark, and dangerous place, home to mischievous metal fairies and fearsome clockwork dragons that breathe scalding steam. The people wear goggles to protect their eyes, brass grill insets in their nostrils to filter air, or mechanical limbs to replace missing ones. Over it all rules the Lady, and the Lady has demanded a new son—a perfect flesh-and-blood child. She has chosen Jack. His only hope of escape lies with a legendary clockwork bird. The Gearwing grants wishes—or it did, before it was broken—before it was killed. But some things don’t stay dead forever.
Lovable but accident-prone Mildred Hubble is possibly the worst witch ever to go to Miss Cackle’s Academy for Witches. She always tries her best, but her spells never seem to go right. In her latest adventure, Mildred is set up for disaster by her arch-nemesis, Ethel Hallow. Ethel steals Mildred’s summer project and her enchanted tortoise, Einstein, and Mildred must brave a broomstick flight through a violent thunderstorm to rescue him.
The last member of a line of explorers, unfailingly optimistic Pigsticks hires a hapless delivery hamster named Harold to be his companion for a quest that wends through jungles, deserts, and mountains in search of the Ends of the Earth.
Mike Klingenberg is a troubled 14-year-old from a dysfunctional family in Berlin who thinks of himself as boring, so when a Russian juvenile delinquent called Tschick begins to pay attention to him and include Mike in his criminal activities, he is excited–until those activities lead to disaster on the autobahn.
“Orphan Nicolo Zen is all alone in 1700s Venice, save for his clarinet, enchanted by a mysterious magician to allow its first player to perform expertly. Soon Nicolo is a famous virtuoso, wealthy beyond his dreams, but he can’t stop wondering if he earned the success — or the girl he met in Venice is safe from the harm”–
Two teens from different ethnic groups in present-day Afghanistan must fight their culture, tradition, families, and the Taliban to stay together as they and another village boy relate the story of their forbidden love.
In a savage land sustained by wizardry and ruled by vendetta, Lina is the enchanting but willful daughter of a village lord. She and her childhood companion, Damek, have grown up privileged and spoiled, and they’re devoted to each other to the point of obsession. But Lina’s violet eyes betray her for a witch, and witches are not tolerated in a brutally patriarchal society. Her rank protects her from persecution, but it cannot protect her from tragedy and heartbreak. An innocent visitor stands witness to the devastation that ensues as destructive longing unleashes Lina’s wrath, and with it her forbidden power. Whether drawn by the romantic, the magical, or the gothic, readers will be irresistibly compelled by the passion of this tragic tale.