From a debut novelist, a heroine who will make you laugh, and will break your heart.Eleven-year-old Lily has a passion for Nancy Drew stories and a secret she is keeping from those she loves. When summer brings lying, stealing, sneaky Tinny Bridges to town, Lily must be on her guard with this perceptive newcomer, or risk having her secret revealed. But Tinny won’t leave Lily alone. She takes candy from the general store and blames Lily. She tries to steal Lily’s friends and even her father’s affection. Then Tinny goes missing, and only watchful, mystery-loving Lily has any idea what happened to her. But for Lily, finding Tinny means confronting her hidden past. Funny, poignant, and peopled with memorable characters, this first novel announces a writer of great warmth and talent.

Caught in the crossfire of an interstellar war, our Earth was bombed to flinders--and then repaired. The mysterious alien Benefactors who healed the planet also offered "uplift" to our dolphins and gorillas. The dolphins turned them down. The gorillas said yes. As a result, we're now sharing our world with language-using, tool-making simians. Tensions are inevitable, in both directions, but it's gradually working out.Decades later, teenage cadet Robin Plotnik has been assigned to Fist of Earth, a defense station high above Earth, keeping watch against further attacks by the interstellar Horde. Robin's a spacecraft mechanic-in-training, apprenticed to Chief "Mac" Gimbensky, a cranky but basically benign gorilla with issues of his own.Fist of Earth is a challenging place to grow up. Robin and Mac maintain fighter craft for the all-woman "Barbarian Squadron", which constantly competes for prestige with the other squadrons based on Fist of Earth. Robin's trying to romance a young librarian, and he's far from sure he knows what he's doing. Most of all, he's constantly struggling to figure out his moody, mercurial boss.Then he and his best friend become entangled in a burgeoning scandal over betting on the squadrons' standings. And just when things look like they've hit rock bottom, the worst thing imaginable arrives at Fist of Earth: an efficiency expert from Earth, determined to reorganize Robin's hard-won life, and the whole squadron system, out of existence.Fresh and engaging, crammed with likeable characters and science-fictional inventiveness, Grease Monkey is like a classic "Heinlein juvenile" in sequential-art mode.Introduction by Kurt Busiek, author of Astro City

Supporting her chef boyfriend as he works to get Simmer, his fledgling trendy restaurant up and running, Chloe Carter must take time out of her busy schedule when Leandra, an unpopular waitress at the restaurant, turns up murdered in a fish truck, in a mystery that comes complete with recipes. By the authors of Simmer Down and Steamed.

HOW FAR WILL OTTO GO TO PROTECT HIS FRIENDS? Otto Malpense and his friends thought their first year at the Higher Institute of Villainous Education was the most adventurous and exciting that they would ever encounter. They were dead wrong. When Otto and Wing are allowed off campus to attend Wing's father's funeral, they have no idea it's a trap, all part of a lethal plan organized by Cypher, the most ruthless supervillain any of them have ever known. He intends to use them to retrieve the Overlord Protocol, a device that has the capacity to help him take over the world. But when things go terribly wrong, Otto will stop at nothing to hunt him down and make him pay. With the help of Laura, Shelby, Raven, and his former nemesis, Dr. Nero, Otto must find a way to defeat an enemy that has overcome some of the planet's most infamous villains without even breaking a sweat. Because if he doesn't, the world as they know it will be changed forever.