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Adventure
Jack's Knife (A Sirius Mystery)
Jack's Knife
Chris Wood, Beverley Wood
Fifteen-year-old Jackson has big dreams fueled by long talks with his elderly next-door neighbor, Al McMann. At 91, McMann has many stories about policing the northwest as a young man. But their friendship worries Jackson's single mom, who finds it "unhealthy." When she insists that Jack break off the friendship and sign up for community baseball instead, he is hurt and angry. When a stray dog turns up, his mother demands they call animal control, and Jack ends up dodging the dogcatcher with his new friend. Ducking through a fence, he stumbles into an unfamiliar place — Juneau, Alaska in the mid-1930s, where he’s soon involved with a fledgling law-enforcement team that just might need his help. This new young adult novel from the husband-and-wife team of Chris and Beverley Wood blends a compelling story of a troubled teen and his canine best friend with an exciting time-travel adventure.

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The Raven League
The Raven League
Alex Simmons, Bill McCay
When Sherlock Holmes goes missing, Archie Wiggins, an ex-member of the Baker Street Irregulars, believes the Irregulars may have something to do with it, and sets out with other misfits to not only find the famous sleuth, but solve a few murders along the way.

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Ark Angel (An Alex Rider Adventure)
Ark Angel
Anthony Horowitz
Shot outside the offices of MI6 and left for dead by Scorpia, Alex Rider awakens in a top-secret hospital, glad simply to be alive. But danger has a way of following Alex, and when the boy in the next room is the victim of a kidnapping attempt, it is Alex who saves him—only to be kidnapped himself. The man behind the kidnapping? None other than Nikolei Drevin, wealthiest developer in the world, and the man who single-handedly is funding the first luxury hotel in outer space, Ark Angel. Yet the project is hemorrhaging millions of dollars along the way, and Drevin will stop at nothing to cease the bleeding. Even if it means blowing up Ark Angel. Even if it means sacrificing his only son. . . .

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The North Pole Was Here: Puzzles and Perils at the Top of the World (New York Times)
The North Pole Was Here
Andrew Revkin
The sun never sets, the air is twenty degrees below zero, and the ice is moving at four hundred yards an hour. Welcome to the North Pole. In 2003, environmental reporter Andrew Revkin joined a scientific expedition to one of the world's last uncharted frontiers, where he was the first New York Times reporter ever to file stories and photographs from the top of the world.In his quest to understand the pole, Andrew leads readers through the mysterious history of arctic exploration; he follows oceanographers as they drill a hole through nine feet of ice to dive into waters below; peers into the mysteries of climate modeling and global warming; and ultimately shows how the fate of the pole will affect us all.

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The Myth Hunters (The Veil, Book 1)
The Myth Hunters
Christopher Golden
In this enthralling new tale from bestselling author Christopher Golden, one man is drawn into a realm just across the veil from our own, where every captivating myth and fairy tale is true, the vanished exist–and every fear is founded….Yielding to his father's wishes, Oliver Bascombe abandoned his dream of being an actor and joined the family law firm. Now he will marry a lovely young woman bearing the Bascombe stamp of approval. But on the eve of his wedding, a blizzard sweeps in–bringing with it an icy legend who calls into question everything Oliver believes about the world and his place in it…. Pursued by a murderous creature who heeds no boundaries, Jack Frost needs Oliver's help to save both himself and his world–an alternate reality slowly being displaced by our own. To help him, Oliver Bascombe, attorney-at-law, will have to become Oliver Bascombe, adventurer, hero–and hunted. So begins a magnificent journey where he straddles two realities…and where, even amid danger, Oliver finds freedom for the very first time.

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The Mask of Atreus
The Mask of Atreus
A. J. Hartley
When the proprietor of an obscure museum is found dead amidst priceless Greek antiquities--one of which is missing along with the bones of a legendary hero thought to exist only in myth--museum curator Deborah Miller enters into dangerous realm of mystery, murder, and vengeance. Original.

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Anatopsis
Anatopsis
Chris Abouzeid
Princess Anatopsis Solomon wants to be a knight-errant. But hermother, chairwoman of Amalgamated Witchcraft Corporation, plans for her immortal daughter to take over the family business. The Queen has even hired a new tutor: a demigod named Mr. Pound. But Mr. Pound’s plans go far beyond completing Ana’s education. He is searching for the mysterious and powerful Os Divinitas. And if he finds it, nothing will survive. A shocking and powerful gift will catapult the Princess into an unlikely quest through the rich worlds of Anatopsis, inhabited by magic immortals, a rebel army, and the last dog in the Universe.

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The Orphan Prince
The Orphan Prince
Jeremy Lee
The silhouette of a man on horseback stood on the knoll against the brilliant backdrop of the lightning, a man with flowing long hair and a large cape that flapped wildly in the wind. Apparently, King Idan had also seen the horse rider, for he pulled on the reins and halted the horse's advance. Leaning back against his father, Ari remained still and peered ahead into the gloom, his heart beating with apprehension.At the age of six, Prince Ari witnessed his father's assassination. Five years later, he continues to have recurring nightmares about the tragedy.Although he's still heir to the throne of the Kingdom of Dinan, Ari's life since King Idan's death has been full of loneliness and misery. His uncle, Lord Peran, harbors no love for him, and his cousin, Roi, hates him.Ari blames his misery on his father's assassin, Black Wolf, a legendary swordsman from the Empire of Narsus whose faceless, shadowy figure haunts Ari's dreams. But Black Wolf's name inspires great fear and deep fascination in Ari.A few days after his eleventh birthday, Ari embarks on a perilous journey to Narsus in search of Black Wolf. What he finds at the end of the journey changes his life forever.

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The Greenstone Grail: A Novel (The Sangreal Trilogy)
The Greenstone Grail
Amanda Hemingway
A desperate mother spirits away her infant son, seemingly drawn (chased, perhaps?) to the small English village of Thornyhill. She ends up on the doorstep of old Bartlemy, a curious man who has lived on the forested land for as long as anyone can remember–and who comes to believe that the child is destined for great things. . . .While growing up under Bartlemy’s protective eye, Nathan Ward senses something else watching him, a shift of shadows in the surrounding Darkwood. Then pieces of his dreams begin to come to life. A man he saved from the ocean washes ashore on the television news. A greenish stone cup set with jewels that has haunted his visions sounds eerily like one lost by the Thorn family centuries ago–a cup that has recently made its way back into the hands of the village’s last living ancestor.Yet when Nathan learns the chalice may have come from another world, a land with bloodstained moons and a toxic sun, he knows he is destined to play a part in something beyond his most vivid imagination. But why is the cup here, and what could it possibly want with a teenage boy and a sleepy town of villagers full of tall tales? With the help of his best friend, Hazel, Nathan must figure out why he’s been chosen–and for what purpose. Even if it means traveling deeper each night into dreams, into lands, into legends that both terrify and mesmerize him.The Greenthorn Grail is the first novel of a thrilling new trilogy, tracing a boy’s journey–a quest rife with magic, wonder, and forces as dark as midnight.From the Hardcover edition.

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The Sword of Straw: A Novel (The Sangreal Trilogy)
The Sword of Straw
Amanda Hemingway
Embark upon a quest rife with magic, wonder, and forces as dark as midnight. . . . Parallel universes and grave danger are nothing new to Nathan Ward. During his last mission, he risked life and limb to retrieve the Grail for safekeeping. But Nathan’s adventures are just beginning. Lately his dreams have been transporting him to a desolate city whose people have fled—save for a sickly king and his daughter, Princess Nell. In their decaying hilltop castle, they live in the shadow of a terrifying curse inflicted by a sword that holds within its gleaming metal an ancient demon conjured by the universe’s most powerful wizard. It is a sword that brings death to anyone who dares to draw it from its sheath. But the king is dying, and the legend claims that only a stranger can save him . . . and that this stranger alone is destined to awake—and defeat—the dark evil in the sword. But who among mortals and spirits could ever imagine that a boy materializing into alternate worlds still dressed in his pajamas could be the chosen one . . . the one entrusted with the long-lost plan to retrieve the Grail relics and save a dying cosmos?

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