It has been ten years since the great battle that wiped out all the superhumans. Whether they all died that day or simply lost their powers and blended back into society, only one thing is certain: They are gone. Or are they? Thirteen-year-olds Danny and Colin have recently begun changing. How can they explain Danny’s newfound ability to move at the speed of light, or Colin’s surprising strength? They can’t, but their parents—the lost generation of superhumans—can. They have been watching and waiting for these changes. So have others—and not everyone is happy about the boys’ new powers. Some will do anything to stop them.
Adventure
Canned
Fergal Bamfield doesn’t collect stamps like normal kids. He’s an oddball (his mother prefers to call him “clever”), and his collection is as strange as everything else about him. Fergal Bamfield collects tin cans. Then one day he finds a can without a label. What could be in it? Peaches, soup, perhaps revolting spam? But instead it’s something gruesome: a human finger. Then Fergal finds another can, this time containing a one-word message, HELP! Now Fergal and his friend Charlotte are knee-deep in an adventure, and they’re about to learn something horrible: Everybody has an expiration date.
Mariah Mundi: The Midas Box
The Prince Regent is no ordinary hotel—powered entirely by steam, run by an eccentric inventor who doesn’t believe in sleep, it’s a place full of shadowy characters and dangerous secrets. Mariah has just started working there as a magician’s assistant, and when he and his coworker Sacha unwittingly learn more than they were meant to know, they suddenly find themselves pawns in an evil plot so full of twists and turns that even the labyrinth of hidden tunnels and caverns beneath the hotel can’t contain it. As they struggle to unravel the mystery and stay alive in the process, encountering secret rooms, enchanted objects and vicious mythical creatures, they question whom to trust. All the adults—even the ones offering help—seem to be hiding something. After all, Mariah only got his job because his predecessor vanished one night—and, as Mariah is fast realizing, not all magic tricks are illusions.
Escape the Mask
Coriko has never known a world beyond his cell and the fields where he toils all day. He does what he’s told and tries not to anger the Spears, the cruel, masked jailers who guard him and the other child slaves. If he gathers baskets of shards and keeps quiet and orderly, then he can spend time with his cellmate and best friend, Pippa. But without warning, the children’s orderly lives begin to change—slowly at first, with the arrival of a pair of siblings who speak Coriko and Pippa’s language. Soon after, violent events shake up the quiet world of Grassland, and Coriko must find the strength to grasp his freedom.
Midnight Blue
Bonnie, a girl torn between the harsh reality of her mother’s weaknesses and her grandmother’s strong will escapes her home one day by sneaking into her neighbor’s hot air balloon. But instead of flying into the clouds and back down, she lands in another world, something like her own, but both kinder and somehow much more terrifying. She’s not sure if she can ever leave this nearly parallel world and return to her own. And if she did, she isn’t sure she’ll be able to bring back with her the sense of warmth and love she has grown to cherish.
The Mzungu Boy
For Kariuki, life in a small village in Kenya is one great adventure. The best part of his day is the walk home from school, when he is free from both his bullying headmaster and his mother’s long list of chores. The landscape around his village is beautifully wild, and Kariuki knows it well. One day Kariuki meets Nigel, a boy from England who has come to visit his grandfather, the fearsome Bwana Ruin, who owns the farm where the villagers work. The villagers call Nigel the mzungu boy (westerner), and view him with suspicion and fear, but not Kariuki. One day the boys decide to hunt down the meanest warthog in the forest. The hunt takes them deeper into the jungle than Kariuki has ever gone, and all at once his beloved forest becomes a frightening place. Dangerous creatures live in the jungle, including the mau-mau, the men with guns who are plotting against Bwana Ruin and the white soldiers. And when Nigel suddenly disappears, will Kariuki be able to save his friend?In this novel, the author captures a time of innocence, wild beauty, and the growing violence that eventually changed the entire structure of colonial Africa.
Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code
Sequel to Artemis Fowl, the Arctic incident. After Artemis uses stolen fairy technology to create a powerful microcomputer and it is snatched by a dangerous American businessman, Artemis, Juliet, Mulch, and the fairies join forces to try to retrieve it.
More Minds
Princess Lenora sets out to conquer a giant causing problems in the northern countries and soon realizes that her real battle is actually going to be trying to keep the Balance, the source that keeps the alternative worlds in their place, from falling apart.
The Secret History of Tom Trueheart
Tom’s six older brothers are adventurers who go on dangerous quests in the Land of Stories. Tom stays home with his mother. Tom’s brothers are famous for the exciting endings they discover for the tales the Story Bureau assigns to them. Tom worries he will never have a story of his own. But when his brothers fail to return from their adventures in time to celebrate Tom’s twelfth birthday, a letter from the Story Bureau arrives … addressed to Tom. It is up to him to find out why his brothers haven’t completed their missions. Tom packs his bags and kisses his mother good-bye. It turns out that he has his own story after all.
Ahmek
This is the story of Ahmek, a young beaver, going about the business of living in his natural habitat. Through his eyes, we see a man, an artist painting the wilderness. Slowly, cautiously, Ahmek and the man establish a rapport, only to have it shattered when poachers destroy the beaver dam and threaten Ahmek’s life. In a desperate escape, Ahmek sets out alone on his life’s great adventure. He meets a charming cast of characters, his life true love, and he does find happiness. But there is always that feeling that one day he should return. When he does, he becomes part of a significant mystery that to this day has never been solved.