You’d think growing up in a medieval abbey, surrounded by nothing but monks and hundreds of miles of swamp, would be pretty boring. Pip thinks so too, until the day he meets Perfect, a small stone gargoyle with a life of her own. Before long, the two find themselves in the midst of an assassination attempt against the new king, escaping into the cold dark night, being chased across the fens by a man bent on killing them.
Otto Malpense may only be thirteen years old, but so far he has managed to run the orphanage where he lives, and he has come up with a plan clever enough to trick the most powerful man in the country. He is the perfect candidate to become the world’s next supervillain.That is why he ends up at H.I.V.E., handpicked to become a member of the incoming class. The students have been kidnapped and brought to a secluded island inside a seemingly active volcano, where the school has resided for decades. All the kids are elite; they are the most athletic,the most technically advanced, and the smartest in the country. Inside the cavernous marble rooms, floodlit hangars, and steel doors, the students are enrolled in Villainy Studies and Stealth and Evasion 101.But what Otto soon comes to realize is that this is a six-year program,and leaving is not an option.With the help of his new friends: an athletic martial-arts expert; a world-famous, beautiful diamond thief; and a spunky computer genius — the only other people who seem to want to leave — Otto plot to escape the prison known as H.I.V.E.?
Before Micah came to St. Luc’s, he knew how to beg, how to steal, and how to run from a beating. He did not know how to comb his hair, walk in line when he felt like running, or obey anyone’s whim but his own. He was a stranger in a strange land. Henri has been living within abbey walls all his life, first in the care of nuns, then as a choirboy at St. Luc’s, not far from Paris. He expects to spend the rest of his life there, copying books in the Scriptorium with the other brothers, and singing Mass in the great cathedral. Then Micah arrives, a streetwise ragamuffin with the voice of an angel, saved from certain hanging to sing for God instead of coins. Micah comes like a fresh breeze into dead places, bringing exuberant joy at a time when Henri most needs it. For the plague is coming, the grim reaper that will slash at the very roots of Henri’s security. And neither Henri nor Micah nor anyone else in their world will ever be the same.
Two little girls—raised by wolves—have just arrived at the orphanage, and life will never be the same. Based on a true story, this book is about many things at once: family, friendship, and what it means to have a home.
London, 1830s, 12-year-old Victor, an orphan, knows from experience that life is dangerous, and death by disease or accident is common. But to Mr. Tipple and Mr. Biggs, these streets -teeming with the poor and forgotten are a paradise. They know that a child, once dead, is a commodity, and they are growing impatient.
As teenage suicide bombers terrorize England, 17-year-old Danny tries to help his grandfather, an ex-SAS explosives expert falsely accused of being a traitorous spy by the government’s intelligence agencies.
Meryt-Re, a 13-year-old orphan living in Set-Maat, Egypt, during the building of the pharaohs’ tombs, tries to come to terms with her ability to see the truth in dreams while also attempting to determine who is trying to overthrow the village foreman.
Having grown up in a home for foundlings and possessing a girl’s name, rossam and sets out to report to his new job as a lamplighter and has several adventures along the way as he meets people and monsters who are more complicated that he previously thought.
While Merle and the flowing Queen travel to Hell to enlist Lord Light’s help in Venice’s fight against the invading Egyptian army, Serafin joins a resistance group that is led by an ancient sphinx.
Ben and Jennet, an orphaned brother and sister, are taken in by an old woman in the quaint fishing village of Whitby, where they soon learn of the town’s ancient lore and become involved in an epic struggle between good and evil.