Materials from United States of America
In 1887, the social-climbing Cranstons voyage from New York to London, where they hope to find a husband for their awkward older daughter, secretly accompanied by Helena and her mouse siblings, for whom the journey is both terrifying and wondrous as they meet an array of titled humans despite their best efforts at remaining hidden.
Aerin, with the guidance of the wizard Luthe and the help of the blue sword, wins the birthright due her as the daughter of the Damarian king and a witchwoman of the mysterious, demon-haunted North.
Lemony Snicket’s work is filled with bitter truths, like: ‘It is always cruel to laugh at people, of course, although sometimes if they are wearing an ugly hat it is hard to control yourself.’ Or: ‘It is very easy to say that the important thing is to try your best, but if you are in real trouble the most important thing is not trying your best, but getting to safety.’ For all of life’s ups and downs, its celebrations and its sorrows, here is a book to commemorate it all – especially for those not fully soothed by chicken soup. Witty and irreverent, Horseradish is a book with universal appeal, a delightful vehicle to introduce Snicket’s uproariously unhappy observations to a crowd not yet familiar with the Baudelaires’ misadventures.
Lily. A woman with power to heal, but no powers of speech. Then she meets a mage—a man who can hear the words she forms only in her mind. Will he help her find her voice?Ruen. A princess whose uncle leaves her deep in a cave to die at the hands of a stagman. But when she meets the stagman at last, Ruendiscovers fatehas a few surprises in store for her.Erana, As a baby, she is taken be a witch in return for the healing herbs her father stole from the witch’s garden. Raised alongsidethe witch’s troll son, Erana learns that love comes in many forms. Coral. A beautiful young newcomerwho catches the eye of an older widowed farmer. He can’t believe his good fortune when Coral consents to be his wife. But then the doubts set in—what is it that draws Coral to Butter Hill?Annabelle. When her family moves, the summer befre her junior year of High School, Annabelle spends all her time in the attic of their new house–until she finds the knot in the gain which leads her on a magical mission.
Eighteen-year-old identical twins Alice and Rachel have always shared a very special bond, so when one is abducted the other uses their connection to try to locate her.
Giselle and Ingrid are the twin daughters of Doctor Victor Frankenstein, but they are very different people, and when they inherit his castle in the Orkney Islands, Giselle dreams of holding parties and inviting society–but Ingrid is fascinated by her father’s forbidden experiments.
This is a collection of stories–both imaginative retellings of classic tales as well as McKinley’s own original works–includes “The Twelve Dancing Princesses” and “The Princess and the Frog.”
It’s 1954, and Janie Scott is in boarding school in New Hampshire, trying to make a new life. Two years have passed since she last saw the mysterious apothecary—or his defiant son, Benjamin. All she knows is that her friends are out there somewhere, trying to keep the world safe in an age of mounting atomic power. On the other side of the world, Benjamin is treating the wounded in a jungle war, and experimenting with a magical new formula that will let him communicate with Janie across the globe.
But Janie has her own experiment underway, and it’s attracting interest from sinister forces. Benjamin calls on their friend Pip for help, and they have to race to find one another, and to unravel the mystery of their powerful new enemies.
This novel for ages nine and up is the story of a resilient young girl who struggles as the daughter of an alcoholic father and an absentee mother. Left alone to fend for herself for days at a time, she is observed by a kind and compassionate saleswoman at the mall she retreats to every day after school to avoid going “home.” The saleswoman gains her trust and takes action into her own hands by reporting the girl’s situation to social services. She is placed in foster care, where she dreams of being reunited with her dad, despite the deprivations in her life with him. The relationship between the girl and her foster mother is painful, and the girl’s spirit disintegrates. Eventually, the saleswoman “adopts” the girl into her caring family, whose love and support enable her, finally, to believe in herself.
Francisco Ortiz, a handsome straight-A student and gifted basketball player from the barrio, wins a full scholarship to an elite boarding school. His future seems promising. But soon after Francisco moves into the dorm, his new classmates assume the worst of him: they pepper him with questions about drugs and gangs. It’s all so confusing, made even more complicated when Francisco realizes that back home in the hood, he no longer fits in, though his friends still rely on him to solve their problems. In a desperate attempt to help one of his homies, Francisco makes a terrible decision and becomes everything he fought so hard to rise against. Novel adaptation of the author’s feature film, “Up with me.”