Adventure

A. D. 62: Pompeii
Rebecca East

A twenty-first century woman is stranded in first century Pompeii when a time travel experiment goes awry; she is sold to a wealthy family as a house slave. This provides her with an intimate, upstairs/downstairs perspective on household life in ancient times. At first she does menial work, but she improves her situation by telling stories and making prophecies. As her influence grows, she wins the love of her master and his daughter and provokes the vengeful jealousy of his wife.In this gentle fable about the power of stories to change people's lives, the heroine uses sources that include fairy tales and great works of literature to argue for womens rights and the humanity of slaves, and to inspire herself and others to be resourceful, courageous and independent. Miranda's own life becomes as mythic as the stories she tells. In a narrative that is part adventure, part romance, and part fantasy, the heroine triumphs over adversity and makes a place for herself in the world of the past.Visit the companion web site at www.rebecca-east.com to see ancient works of art that inspired the descriptions of characters and settings.
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Jay
W. Royce Adams, Royce W. Adams
In this colorful sequel to "Me & Jay," 16-year-old Jay Thornton is orphaned and "catches out" on a freight train to avoid placement in a foster home. Instead of a romantic hobo lifestyle, Jay discovers constant physical dangers, frequent hunger, and the fear of being caught by train gangs or angry railroad police. His adventures on the run, and contact with homeless drifters, force him to examine his personal values and the friendships he's left behind. He must decide whether to join a subculture on the fringe of society, or return to a new life in the familiar place he's known as home. The story delivers action-packed excitement, tempered by hard lessons that show why a romantic escape fantasy often proves harder than facing reality.
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The Web: GulliverZone
Stephen Baxter
Welcome to the infinite worlds of The WebFebruary 7, 2027, is World Peace Day. All over the world, celebrations are in full swing. There's even free access to the Web today--a chance to sample the infinite worlds and endless possibilities of virtual reality. Finally, a chance for Sarah to spin into the Web. Too bad she has to bring her little brother, George, with her. But Sarah knows she'll have a great time in GulliverZone, the best theme park in the Web, anyway. What Sarah doesn't know is that February 7, 2027, will turn out to be a day of danger beyond imagination.The peace that is being celebrated in the real world does not extend into cyberspace. A mysterious being known only as the Sorceress seeks to use the Web for her own purposes...and she won't let anything--or anybody--stand her in way... in Stephen Baxter's The Web: GulliverZone.
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The Brave Apprentice
P. W. Catanese
"Seven at one blow!" That's what they say about the Brave Little Tailor -- he killed seven foes with one blow. But no one can prove it's even true. Besides, that took place a long time ago, and the Brave Little Tailor is now an old man. So what happens when an army of angry trolls invades his kingdom? Meet Patch Ridlin. He's a tailor's simple apprentice in the remote village of Crossfield. He's a hard worker who's never wanted for much, except maybe a little adventure. But when he rescues his friend Osbert from an aging and decrepit troll, Patch finds himself something of a town hero. Word of his bravery quickly spreads throughout the countryside, and Patch is summoned to the king's castle. King Milo needs his help to wage war on a gang of trolls threatening to destroy the kingdom. Soon Patch finds himself engaged in an all-out battle against the trolls. With only the help of a fool named Simon and a maddening riddle, can Patch figure out the troll's fatal flaw? Or is the kingdom destined to perish?
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The Green Futures of Tycho
William Sleator
When eleven-year-old Tycho discovers that the mysterious egg-shaped object he dug up in his garden is a time travel device, he can’t resist using his newfound power. Soon he is jumping back and forth in time, mostly to play tricks on his bossy older brothers and sister. But every time he uses the device, he notices that things are different when he gets back—and the futures he visits are getting darker and scarier. Then Tycho comes face-to-face with the most terrible thing of all: his grown-up self. Can Tycho prevent the terrible future he sees from coming true?
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Orphans of Chaos
John C. Wright
John C. Wright burst onto the SF scene with the Golden Age trilogy. His next project was the ambitious fantasy sequence, The Last Guardians of Everness.Wright’s new fantasy is a tale about five orphans raised in a strict British boarding school who begin to discover that they may not be human beings. The students at the school do not age, while the world around them does. The children begin to make sinister discoveries about themselves. Amelia is apparently a fourth-dimensional being; Victor is a synthetic man who can control the molecular arrangement of matter around him; Vanity can find secret passageways through solid walls where none had previously been; Colin is a psychic; Quentin is a warlock. Each power comes from a different paradigm or view of the inexplicable universe: and they should not be able to co-exist under the same laws of nature. Why is it that they can?The orphans have been kidnapped from their true parents, robbed of their powers, and raised in ignorance by super-beings no more human than they are: pagan gods or fairy-queens, Cyclopes, sea-monsters, witches, or things even stranger than this. The children must experiment with, and learn to control, their strange abilities in order to escape their captors.
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Out Of Time
John Marsden
An exciting time travel adventure from the author of the hugely popular Tomorrow series for teens!James reads by his open bedroom window at night. Other lives and other worlds beckon. One of these worlds is conjured by old Mr Woodford, a physicist who looks more like an accountant and who constructs a strange black box. One day when James slips into the laboratory, he makes a dreadful discovery and learns to master a great power. Who is the little boy in Mexico who scratches pictures of aeroplanes in the dust? How will the girl caught in a wartime bomb blast be reunited with her parents? And why does James sit alone in his island of silence?
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The Nobodies
Peter Ferguson, N. E. Bode
THE NOBODIES Fern Drudger's quirky adventures continue in this delightful sequel to The Anybodies. She goes to Camp Happy Sunshine Good Times and is bombarded by desperate messages from people who call themselves the Nobodies. But who are the Nobodies, and what do they want from Fern?
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Arthur and the Forbidden City
Luc Besson
Arthur's quest takes him into the heart of the forbidden city ... Arthur's backyard looks like a peaceful, ordinary garden -- if you are human-sized, that is. But if you're half an inch tall, like the Minimoys, this backyard is a vast world where fierce battles are fought, ferocious monsters are faced, and one evil wizard, Maltazard the Cursed, rules with cruel power from his terrifying stronghold: Necropolis, the forbidden city. Now ten-year-old Arthur -- magically transformed into a Minimoy -- and his Minimoy companions, brave Princess Selenia and mischievous Prince Betameche, must somehow find a way into this forbidden city. Their mission: to rescue Arthur's grandfather, recover a stolen treasure, and save the land of the Minimoys once and for all, before it's too late. But once you're inside the forbidden city .... can you ever get out again?
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Poppy's Return
Brian Floca, Avi
Poppy returns ... with big trouble. Family trouble. Poppy and Rye don't know what to do about their son Ragweed Junior's attitude. He is rude, he is crude, and he has dyed his fur to look like Mephitis, his skunk friend. In short, Ragweed Junior is very much a teenager. Even Ereth, the cantankerous porcupine, with his salty swearing, can't straighten him out. Then Poppy gets an urgent request to return to her old home, Gray House, where her aging parents, Sweet Cicely and Lungwort, are in difficulties. Not only does she agree to go back, she decides to take Junior, in hopes traveling together will bring them together. But when Junior's skunk pal and Ereth join the party, the trip doesn't quite go as expected. And when Poppy recalls she did not get along with her parents, things become even more complicated. Poppy's Return is a hilarious adventure tale about family: the gleeful joys, the farcical sorrows, the high emotions, and the low comedy of living with and without relations. It's also about bears, bulldozers, and the boisterous antics of young mice doing the stinky red. And sugared slug soup, there's always Ereth to stir the stew of Poppy’s rich and rewarding life.