The Shadowmaster has been defeated and the witch sanctuaries are safe for now. But the effort has cost Jazz her life. Trapped in Talamadden, the land of the dead, the former Queen of the Witches is lost in a dark limbo until a spirit guide revives her memories. Desperate to reunite with Bren, she wrestles menacing harpies and shadows to find a way back to the living.
Meanwhile, Bren has become King of the Witches and is now in charge of the witch villages. But he abandons them to search for Jazz, his true love, despite the fact that crossing over to Talamadden would surely kill him. Will Bren and Jazz join up once again to fight evil forces intent on destroying the witches? Or will Bren's impulsive departure leave the witch villages vulnerable to the shadows?
They met under the least auspicious circumstances. He was a teenage volunteer at a nursing home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. She was a wheelchair-bound resident in her nineties. He was poor, Hispanic, living in a rented room in the barrio, separated from his family. Her life, at least before arthritis hobbled her, was comfortable, and her daughters and grandchildren visited as often as they could. But when Margaret Oliver’s daughter hired Elvis Checo to look in on her mother a few afternoons each week, nobody realized that this would be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
In His Oldest Friend, Sonny Kleinfield of The New York Times takes us inside the lives of these two unlikely friends to explore the world of the very young and the very old, showing how underappreciated these groups often are—a mystery to one another and to so many of us in the middle-class adult population. Too often we tend to group together “youth” and “the elderly,” submerging individuals into a group identity. But Elvis and Margaret offer each other that rarest of gifts: recognition and affirmation as a unique human being. Kleinfield opens their lives to us, and shows how their bond of friendship rescued each of them from the bleakness that defeats so many of the youngest and oldest among us.
Ariel is beautiful and magical, a creator of dreams and of mischief. Sprung from the mind of a dazed sailor shipwrecked in the Bermuda Triangle, she rules half of her enchanted isle, dreaming of the savior from the east who will help her conquer all. When Prospero, a lost mariner, appears on the beach, his young daughter, Miranda, in tow, Ariel entices him with her visions of conquest. Together, she promises, they will defeat the mysterious tribe whose drums beat beyond the island's rain forest. The homesick Prospero struggles to resist Ariel's charms, but he almost falls under her spell when Miranda falls in love with their servant, the island boy Caliban. Ariel wants to march west, Prospero wants to sail east, and daughter Miranda wants to play on the beach with her boyfriend. Their clash comes to a head when Ariel, summoning her full powers, creates a cataclysmic storm that will change their lives and the island forever.
Shakespeare scholar Grace Tiffany looks at the dark side of Shakespeare's The Tempest, investing a female Ariel with tremendous strength. The Tempest takes on new meaning for new readers, as Tiffany explores the imagination's power to transform grief into dangerous dreams. A tour de force by the author of My Father Had a Daughter and Will.
Capturing witches
Binding boggarts
Driving away ghosts
For years, Old Gregory has been the Spook for the county, ridding the local villages of evil. Now his time is coming to an end. But who will take over for him? Twenty-nine apprentices have tried–some floundered, some fled, some failed to stay alive.
Only Thomas Ward is left. He's the last hope; the last apprentice.
Can Thomas succeed? Will he learn the difference between a benign witch and a malevolent one? Does the Spook's warning against girls with pointy shoes include Alice? And what will happen if Thomas accidentally frees Mother Malkin, the most evil witch in the county ... ?
Four months ago in the snowy depths of winter, Alaric and Naia, two teenagers who'd never met, discovered they were living almost identical lives in different versions of Withern Rise, their riverside Victorian mansion. One day, they accidentally stranded themselves in the wrong realities.
Now it's summer, and heavy rains have caused the river to overflow. Withern Rise's grounds are under water when Alaric and Naia find their separate ways into an earlier reality -- a small eternity -- and meet a boy called Aldous. Aldous Underwood.
But who is this Aldous? Is he the old vagrant Naia has met in the present day, or an Aldous destined to die very soon, under mysterious circumstances? And will their meeting change Underwood history?
In nineteenth-century London, Jack the Ripper has claimed another victim.
But this "London" is a crime-free virtual city, a historical theme park for tourists. Qualified witch Roberta Morgenstern and her fresh-out-of-the-police-academy assistant, Clément Martineau, set out to solve the murder.
A wild chase through the streets of old London brings the heroes face-to-face with the terrifying new Ripper. But then they realize their true quarry is the man behind the monster: the mastermind who is bringing some of history's most notorious villains back to life. The trail of evidence leads them from the Versailles of Louis XIV through Renaissance Venice to Montezuma's Mexico, where they have a date with the devil himself....
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?
Combining elements of Hornblower with Harry Potter, and Robert Louis Stevenson with Robin Hobb, Midshipwizard Halcyon Blithe is a nautical tale rich in magic and intrigue. A tale set against a panorama of fantastic naval battle as we follow the career of a young midshipwizard as he moves up through the ranks of His Majesty's Navy.
