Five stranded teenagers must battle for their lives against a group of escaped convicts, and each other, in this shocking survival thriller from the author of Bad Girls and Lost Summer. Courtney Stanton thinks she's on just another ski trip with her friends -- until a horrific car accident strands them all on an isolated Colorado road during a blizzard. Frightened but alive, Courtney and her companions discover an abandoned vehicle nearby, and seek help. But the vehicle turns out to be a prison van, with the inmates missing, and the guard's dead body in the front seat. Soon after, a stumbling figure emerges from the snow, a handcuffed refugee from the van. He says he's been in prison for selling meth, but that he once served in the army. Dare they trust him? He pleads innocence about the guard's murder, warns them about the other fugitives, and promises he will help guide them out of the wilderness. But as the group begins a nightmare trek across the frozen landscape, they start to get the feeling he hasn't told them the entire truth, and someone -- or something -- is secretly watching their every move.

When an accident leaves teenage cousins Meline and Jocelyn parentless, they come to live with their unknown and eccentric Uncle Marten on his private island. They soon discover that the island has a history as tragic as their own: it was once an air force training camp, led by a mad commander whose crazed plan to train pilots to fly airplanes without instruments sent eleven pilots to their deaths. Jocelyn, Meline, and Uncle Marten are soon joined on this island of wrecked planes and wrecked men by an elderly Austrian housekeeper, a very mysterious butler, a cat, and a dog. But to Jocelyn and Meline, being in a strange new place around strange new people only underscores the fact that the world they once knew has ended. Told in the alternating voices of four characters dealing with grief in different ways, Polly Horvath’s new novel is a rich and complicated story about loss and the possibility— and impossibility—of beginning again.  The Corps of the Bare-Boned Plane is a 2008 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.

The magnificent final book in J. K. Rowling's seven-part saga comes to readers July 21, 2007.You'll find out July 21!

Pageants of Despair is a story of a boy caught in a battle between good and evil. After unknown assailants attack his mother, Peter is sent by train to stay with his grandparents. On that ride an uncanny figure leads him back in time to the fourteenth century village of Dunfield, where Peter will take part in a mysterious play in which the actors become the characters they portray. Peter believes he has been brought there to counter an unearthly, menacing influence, but a succession of terrifying experiences leads him to suspect, instead, that he might be destined to cause the disaster he is trying to avert. He needs courage to face the crisis and intelligence to solve the mystery. In this tale where ancient pageants morph into horrific realities, the author draws on the actual medieval Townley Cycle of Mystery Plays—which were performed annually at Wakefield, England—to give Peter's experience in the imaginary village of Dunfield a vivid true-to-life."The history is fascinating…Hamley has hit on the right road back to such lace-edged, antique virtues as honesty, gentleness, vision, and love."—Best Sellers"The ancient tussle between God and the Devil seems to lie at the heart of this tale of sinister skullduggery in the Middle Ages. A good deal of background information on the Mystery Plays and extracts from some of the performances crystallise the setting; the atmosphere of religious superstition and its hold over simple folk are captured with a grim reality and a sense of lurking foreboding. [Readers who]…allow the tensions of time and mystery to work will share a strange experience in an unfamiliar world."—The Junior Bookshelf"Hamley does create a lively picture of how the audiences and actors must have responded to the powerful messages of the miracle plays."—Kirkus Reviews"The pageants are a frightening battleground—replete with medieval images of corporeal and spiritual corruption—from which Peter and his friends emerge triumphant."—BooklistDennis Hamley was born in 1935 in Kent, England. He read English at Cambridge University and worked for many years as a teacher, a teacher-trainer, and an adviser to schools. He also founded the Lending Our Minds Out creative writing courses for children. Hamley's first book was published in 1962, a modern version of three Miracle Plays. Pageants of Despair, his first children's novel, was originally published in 1974. In 1992 Hamley turned to writing full-time. His latest title, Ellen's People, is published in the UK by Walker Books. In between, he wrote more than fifty other books, including short stories, books for schools, and non-fiction for all ages. Hamley lives with his wife in Hertford, England.