Like Gail Carson Levine's books, Merrie Haskell's middle grade fantasy adventure Handbook for Dragon Slayers mixes magic, mythical creatures, thrilling action, and a wonderful cast of characters.Political upheaval sends Princess Tilda fleeing from her kingdom in the company of two hopeful dragon slayers. The princess never had any interest in chasing dragons. The pain from her crippled foot was too great, and her dream was to write a book. But the princess finds herself making friends with magical horses, facing the Wild Hunt, and pointing a sword at fire-breathing dragons. While doing things she never imagined, Tilda finds qualities in herself she never knew she possessed.Handbook for Dragon Slayers is a deeply satisfying coming-of-age tale wrapped in a magical adventure story.

There was nothing waiting for ex-cop Max Mingus when he walked out of Attica Prison after serving hard time for murder—his adored wife died in a car crash while he was locked up. Now Miami's one-time top detective is haunted by an empty house, bad memories . . . and an impossible job offer for obscenely good money. Three years ago, Charlie Carver, the five-year-old son of a powerful Haitian billionaire, vanished. His father is offering Max $15 million to bring the boy back—or, at the very least, to find his body and deliver his abductors.Max knows he should turn this case down. There's no way the kid is still alive, and pursuing his ghost means plunging headfirst into Haiti, a steaming island hotbed of crime, greed, voodoo, and corruption. And the three detectives who preceded Mingus are all dead . . . or worse. But Max has nothing left to lose—even if his investigation stirs up a murky evil that can swallow a man whole . . . and leads him to the soul-destroying truth about a terrifying local myth, a child-stealing nightmare called "Mr. Clarinet."

The United States and its Freedom Coalition allies are conducting serial invasions across the globe, including an attack on the anti-capitalist rebels of Northern California. The Middle East—now a single consumerist Caliphate led by Lebanese pop singer Caliph Fred—is in an uproar after an attack on the al-Aqsa Mosque gets televised on the Holy Land Channel.The world is on the brink of a total radioactive, no-survivors war, and human?kind's last hope is Eliot R. Vanderthorpe, Jr., celebrity heir, debauched party animal, and Elvis impersonation scholar. But Eliot's got his own problems. His evangelical dad is breeding red heifers in anticipation of the Rapture. Eliot's dissertation is in the toilet. And he has a doppelg?nger. An evil doppelg?nger.

"I've seen what the world does to the weak. It'll eat you alive." Tirio was cast out of the Takunami tribe at a very young age because of his disabled foot. But an American woman named Sara adopted him, and his life has only gotten better since. Now, as his thirteenth birthday approaches, things are nearly perfect. So why is he having visions and hearing voices calling him back to the AmazonLuka has spent his whole life preparing for his soche seche tente, a sixth-sense test all Takunami boys must endure just before their thirteenth birthday. His family's future depends on whether or not he passes this perilous test. His mother has dedicated herself to making sure that no aspect of his training is overlooked . . . but fate has a way of disturbing even the most carefully laid plans. Two young boys. An unforgiving jungle. One shared destiny.

There are times when a tree can no longer withstand the pain inflicted on it, and the wind will take pity on that tree and topple it over in a mighty storm. All the other trees who witnessed the evil look down upon the fallen tree with envy. They pray for the day when a wind will end their suffering. I pray for the day when God will end mine. In a time and place without moral conscience, fourteen-year-old Ansel knows what is right and what is true. But it is dangerous to choose honesty, and so he chooses silence. Now an innocent man is dead, and Ansel feels the burden of his decision. He must also bear the pain of losing a friend, his family, and the love of a lifetime. Coretta Scott King Award winner and Newbery Honoree Julius Lester delivers a haunting and poignant novel about what happens when one group of people takes away the humanity of another.

For Alex Ford, dressage is an oasis. In the stable, he can slip into his riding pants, shed the macho cowboy image, and feel like himself for a change. For Cleo O'Shea, dressage is a fresh start. She's got a new boarding school, absentee parents, and, best of all, no one to remember her past. . . . They're an unlikely pair. Cleo's looking for love, but Alex has a secret he's not ready to give up, and a flirtation with Cleo is the last thing on his mind. But you can't find romance before you know real friendship, and sometimes the last person you'd ever think of as a friend ends up being the one you need the most. Susan Juby's trademark humor brings life and laughter to this remarkable story of relationships, mixed signals, and the soul-searching that sometimes takes two.

Gossip Girl meets Cinderella in this boarding school story from bestselling authors Carrie Karasyov and Jill Kargman, star of the Bravo series Odd Mom Out.Lucy Peterson is on scholarship at a Swiss boarding school, but she doesn't quite fit in at a place where caviar is served at every meal and royals lurk around every corner. She's just an average American teen and Ivy-League-bound hopeful who wants to kick some academic and tennis butt.But before she knows it, Lucy finds herself going out of her way to impress a real life prince and somehow she's earned the popular clique's irrevocable scorn. What has she gotten herself into?

Divorced, alone, and unexpectedly unemployed, Sylvia Landsman flees to Italy, where she meets Henry, a wistful, married, middle-aged expatriate. Taking off on a grand tour of Europe bankrolled with his wife's money, Henry and Sylvia follow a circuitous route around the continent—as Sylvia entertains Henry with stories of her peculiar family and her damaged friends, of dead ducks and Alma Mahler. Her narrative is a tapestry of remembrances and regrets...and her secret shame: a small, cowardly sin of omission. Yet when the opportunity arises for Sylvia and Henry to do something small but brave, the refrain "if only" returns to haunt her, leaving Sylvia with one more story of love lived and lost.

One of the most admired and honored of our contemporary literary artists, author John Crowley now brilliantly re-creates a time in America when ordinary people were asked to sacrifice their comforts and uproot their lives for the cause of freedom.In the early years of the 1940s, as the nation's young men ship off to war, the call goes out for builders of the machinery necessary to defeat the enemy. To this purpose, a city has sprung up seemingly overnight in the windswept fields of Oklahoma: the Van Damme airplane factory, a gargantuan complex dedicated to the construction of the B-30 Pax, the largest bomber ever built. Laborers—some men, but mostly women, many of whom have never operated a rivet gun or held a screwdriver—flock to this place, eager to earn, to grow, to do their part. Many are away from home for the very first time, enticed by the opportunity to be something more than wife and homemaker. In the middle of nowhere they will live, work, and earn their own money, fearing for the safety of their absent fighting men as the world around them changes forever.Vi, with her gun of a pitching arm, finds Van Damme after fleeing a dying ranch and a stubborn, broken father to chase a future built on something stronger than poison earth. Connie, once fragile and helpless, follows an unfaithful husband here with their little boy in tow—and inadvertently discovers who she is and what she's capable of achieving. Before Diane can enter the factory's gates, the restless young woman must leave behind the hot music and soldier boys she followed, taking a sudden, bold, and dangerous step in pursuit of something different, adult, and real.Their journeys will be liberating in ways they couldn't imagine, and will lead each of them to Prosper Olander. Disabled, an artist, a forger, a friend—a surprising lover and compassionate listener—Prosper has followed unlikely opportunity down a painfully twisting path to take his place as the true heart and soul of a temporary city. And before the B-30 Pax takes flight, he will change the lives of four women in profound and unexpected ways.Destined to stand tall among his previous acclaimed fiction—including Little, Big; The ?gypt Cycle; The Translator; and Lord Byron's Novel—John Crowley's Four Freedoms is perhaps his most heartfelt and compelling novel to date. It is a moving, evocative, and unforgettable saga of wives, mothers, and lovers—of strangers, outcasts, and damaged Quixotes—who, unmoored by conflict's unpredictable tides, find community, purpose, identity, independence . . . and one remarkable man who will touch them all.

Switching seamlessly between the chaos and bloodshed of 1940s India and the multicultural mélange of twenty-first-century Britain, Glen Duncan's sublime new novel finds love in both. Ross Monroe is a boxing railwayman with a weakness for get-rich-quick schemes. Kate Lyle is a headstrong young woman desperate to escape a sexually predatory household. Both are Anglo-Indians, members of a race that helped turn the wheels of Empire for years. But Empire days are numbered, and as India sheds its colonial skin, the young lovers must face their own tryst with destiny.In twenty-first-century England, Owen Monroe is writing this story of his parents' lives in an effort to avoid the problems in his own: lost love, relentless libido, dreams of death, and a world full of headlines he can't understand and doesn't want to. But keeping past and present apart isn't as easy as it seems, and before long Owen is deep in the one story he never wanted to tell....Epic in its scope yet never losing sight of the telling, gorgeous detail, The Bloodstone Papers is an extraordinarily rich and beautiful read that manages to ask the big questions without fuss and to accept that the big answers aren't always what we want to hear.

Betsy and the Great World: Betsy Ray is twenty-one and on the adventure of a lifetime: a solo tour of Europe! There's even a handsome Italian, Marco, who's going overboard for her—if only she could stop thinking about her ex-sweetheart Joe Willard.Betsy's Wedding: When Betsy's boat docks in New York, Joe is waiting there . . . with a ring! But she's going to learn that marriage isn't all candlelight, roses, and kisses. There's also cooking, ironing, cleaning, and budgeting— and will she be able to find time to forge a writing career?

The First Rule of Torching: Cleanse with fire. Josh is by far the best zombie Torcher around—at least, he is in his virtual-reality zombie-hunting game. Josh has quickly risen through the player ranks, relying on the skill, cunning, and agility of a real Torcher.The Second Rule of Torching: Save all humans.But luckily for Josh, zombies exist only in the virtual world. The real zombie war is now more than fifteen years in the past, and the battle to defeat the deadly epidemic that devastated his family—and millions of others—is the stuff of history lessons.The Third Rule of Torching: You can't bring them back.Charlie is the top-ranked player in the game. Since all the players are shrouded in anonymity, Josh never expects Charlie to be a girl—and he never expects the offer she makes him: to join the underground gaming league that takes the virtual-reality game off the screen and into the streets. Josh is thrilled. But the more involved he gets, the more he realizes that not everything is what it seems. Real blood is spilling, members of the team are disappearing, and the zombies in the game are acting strange. And then there's the matter of a mysterious drug called Z. . . .

The United States is known as a world leader in innovation, boasting brilliant thinkers and trendsetting companies, but that status is at grave risk. American children are well outside the top-ten international student rankings in reading, science, and math; those rankings not to mention the nation's position of leadership on everything from the economy to the military to issues of moral authority will continue to plummet unless we take dramatic action. Michelle Rhee, a driving force behind American education reform, is ready to make a change. In Radical , this fearless and pioneering advocate draws on her own life story and delivers her plan for better American schools. Rhee's goal is to ensure that laws, leaders, and policies are making students not adults our top priority, and she outlines concrete steps that will put us on a dramatically different course. Informing her critique are her extraordinary experiences in education: her years of teaching in inner-city Baltimore; her turbulent tenure as chancellor of the Washington, D.C., public schools; and her current role as an education activist. Rhee draws on dozens of compelling examples from schools she's worked in and studied; from students who've left behind unspeakable home lives and thrived in the classroom; from teachers whose groundbreaking methods have produced unprec?edented leaps in student achievement. The book chronicles Rhee's awakening to the potential of every child blessed with a great teacher, her rage at realizing that adults with special interests are blocking badly needed change, and her recognition that it will take a grassroots movement to break through the barriers to outstanding public schools. An incisive and intensely personal call to arms, Michelle Rhee's Radical is required reading for anyone who seeks a guide not only to the improvement of our schools but also to a brighter future for America's children.

Love is hard. But it doesn't have to be. Leading relationship expert and rising media personality Matthew Hussey provides what every woman needs to know to find lasting love. Offering invaluable insight into the male psyche, he will change the way you approach men and dating and give you the tools you need to find the man you deserve. Hussey answers every single woman three most burning questions: Where do I go to meet good menWhy didn't he callHow do I get him to commitIn Get the Guy , you will learn specific strategies for getting out there and meeting the best single guys. You will also learn why the guy you like has gone cold and the secrets to reigniting a spark with him. And you'll discover why so many guys seem to be afraid of long-term commitment and the three simple steps you can take that will change his mind. Hussey also reveals why playing hard to get is a lose-lose game. A man doesn't want to endlessly chase a woman who is impossible to attain; he wants to win over a woman who is “high value. You'll find out how to create nonnegotiable standards for the way you want to be treated and utilize a foolproof method for determining if a man can live up to them. Leveraging what he learned from coaching thousands of men to find personal and professional success, Hussey will teach you how to meet more men, how to choose one who is worth your time, and finally, how to keep him enthralled forever. His insightfulness, irreverence, and warmth make the journey to love playful and fun, and his advice ensures success in both romance and life.

From the voice of a generation: The most highly anticipated autobiography of the year, and the story of a man who... is a Londoner and a Mod.... wanted The Who to be called The Hair.... loved The Everly Brothers, but not that drawling dope Elvis.... wanted to be a sculptor, a journalist, a dancer and a graphic designer.... became a musician, composer, librettist, fiction writer, literary editor, sailor.... smashed his first guitar onstage, in 1964, by accident.... heard the voice of God on a vibrating bed in rural Illinois.... invented the Marshall stack, feedback and the concept album.... once speared Abbie Hoffman in the neck with the head of his guitar.... inspired Jimi Hendrix pyrotechnical stagecraft.... is partially deaf in his left ear.... stole his windmill guitar playing from Keith Richards.... followed Keith Moon off a hotel balcony into a pool and nearly died.... did too much cocaine and nearly died.... drank too much and nearly died.... detached from his body in an airplane, on LSD, and nearly died.... helped rescue Eric Clapton from heroin.... is banned for life from Holiday Inns.... was embroiled in a tabloid scandal that has dogged him ever since.... has some explaining to do.... is the most literary and literate musician of the last 50 years.... planned to write his memoir when he was 21.... published this book at 67.

Twenty-three years ago, Sam and Dean Winchester lost their mother to a demonic supernatural force. Following the tragedy, their father, John, set out to teach his boys everything about the paranormal evil that lives in the dark corners and on the back roads of America . . . and how to kill it. Fans of the blockbuster television phenomenon can rejoice! A one-of-a-kind compilation of all of Sam and Dean's demon-busting knowledge, The Supernatural Book of Monsters, Spirits, Demons, and Ghouls contains illustrations and detailed de*ions that catalogue the more than two dozen otherworldly enemies that most people believe exist only in folklore, superstition, and nightmares:vampires, ghosts, revenants, reapers, and even bloody clowns. You'll find within these pages Sam and Dean's notes, observations, and memories interwoven with sections of John Winchester's invaluable journal, making this book the perfect companion to every thrilling episode and an essential weapon in the secret war against the hidden creatures of the darkness!

The Invention of Hugo Cabret meets True Grit in this heartfelt novel of resilience, hope, and discovering a family where you least expect it, from award-winning author Robert Sharenow.At the dawn of the twentieth century, thousands of immigrants are arriving in the promised land of New York City. Twelve-year-old Sarah has always dreamed of America, a land of freedom and possibility. In her small village she stares at a postcard of the Statue of Liberty and imagines the Lady beckoning to her. When Sarah and her mother finally journey across the Atlantic, though, tragedy strikes—and Sarah finds herself being sent back before she even sets foot in the country.Yet just as Sarah is ushered onto the boat that will send her away from the land of her dreams, she makes a life-or-death decision. She daringly jumps off the back of the boat and swims as hard as she can toward the Lady's island and a new life.Her leap of faith leads her to an unbelievable hiding place: the Statue of Liberty itself. Now Sarah must find a way to Manhattan while avoiding the night watchman and scavenging enough food to survive. When a surprising ally helps bring her to the city, Sarah finds herself facing new dangers and a life on her own. Will she ever find a true home in America?

National Book Award Winner One Sunday in the spring of 1988, a woman living on a reservation in North Dakota is attacked. The details of the crime are slow to surface as Geraldine Coutts is traumatized and reluctant to relive or reveal what happened, either to the police or to her husband, Bazil, and thirteen-year-old son, Joe. In one day, Joe life is irrevocably transformed. He tries to heal his mother, but she will not leave her bed and slips into an abyss of solitude. Increasingly alone, Joe finds himself thrust prematurely into an adult world for which he is ill prepared. While his father, who is a tribal judge, endeavors to wrest justice from a situation that defies his efforts, Joe becomes frustrated with the official investigation and sets out with his trusted friends, Cappy, Zack, and Angus, to get some answers of his own. Their quest takes them first to the Round House, a sacred space and place of worship for the Ojibwe. And this is only the beginning. Written with undeniable urgency, and illuminating the harsh realities of contemporary life in a community where Ojibwe and white live uneasily together, The Round House is a brilliant and entertaining novel, a masterpiece of literary fiction. Louise Erdrich embraces tragedy, the comic, a spirit world very much present in the lives of her all-too-human characters, and a tale of injustice that is, unfortunately, an authentic reflection of what happens in our own world today.

From bestselling author Kim Harrison comes this original short story (to be featured in her anthology Into the Woods, October 2012) where things are most definitely not as they seem. A pet shop employee’s innocent date with a customer quickly turns disturbing rather than delightful. She and her family hold a centuries-old secret, and they want him to stay with them forever . . .

In Amazon.com Jeff Bezos built something the world had never seen. He created the most recognized brand name on the Internet, became for a time one of the richest men in the world, and was crowned "the king of cyber-commerce." Yet for all the media exposure, the inside story of Amazon.com has never really been told. In this revealing, unauthorized account, Robert Spector, journalist and best-selling author, gives us this up-to-date, fast-paced, behind-the-scenes story of the company's creation and rise, its tumultuous present, and its uncertain future.

In the four years since he earned his sergeant's stripes, young Richard Sharpe has led a relatively peaceful existence. But Sharpe's reverie ends when he barely survives a murderous act of treason by a bitter English officer who has joined the mercenary forces of the Mahratta confederation, determined to drive the British from the continent. Vowing to hunt down the turncoat, Sharpe plunges headlong into the white-hot battle of Assaye alongside Sir Arthur Wellesley -- the future of Duke of Wellington -- in the fiercest fight of his career. Sharpe's Triumph is a riveting story of betrayal and revenge that showcases the deft blend of suspenseful military adventure and sweeping historical detail that has made Bernard Corwell's books bestsellers around the world.