"Twelve-year-old Ben is a shy, quiet kid. His life isn't perfect, but he feels at home in his New York City apartment. Then his dad takes a job in London, and everything changes. His parents separate, and Ben's mom moves them back to her hometown of Austin, Texas. Ben's simple life is suddenly complicated. He misses his apartment, his best friend, Jake, and his dad. Then he meets Mabley, who becomes a bright spot to Ben's day. But when his mom starts...

"Skalde writes her thoughts on pieces of paper, making new discoveries and revelations, and finding scraps with which to understand her limited world. Her mother Edith tells her little, preferring the solitude of her room. Their house is full of silence, and secrets. Skalde has only ever known life in the territory, a terrain of farms and forest cut off from the rest of the world. They are isolated further, as decades since Edith's arrival in the...

"In the face of a pandemic, an unprepared world scrambles to escape the mysterious disease causing sensory damage, nerve loss, and, in most cases, death. Neffy, a disgraced and desperately indebted twenty-seven-year-old marine biologist, registers for an experimental vaccine trial in London-perhaps humanity's last hope for a cure. Though isolated from the chaos outside, she and the other volunteers-Rachel, Leon, Yahiko, and Piper-cannot hide from...

"After his wife's death, a man brings his young daughter to live in a cave he has found in the Cascade mountains. Once there, his daughter begins to sense the presence of other people in the cave, a mother and son who retreated there during the last ice age in an effort to survive"-- After three tours in Iraq, the fabric of Dave Cartwright's life has begun to unravel. Gripped by PTSD, he is losing his home, his wife, his direction. Most days, his...

Eighth-grader Jewel has all the usual middle school problems (crush on an unattainable boy, ex-BFF), but the thing that is making life a torment at school is the horn growing out of her forehead, which cannot be removed simply; she has two friends she can depend on and an invisible unicorn companion, but she would really like to be normal in time to read her essay in regional French speaking competition--and maybe she has found a doctor who can do...

"They were a perfect family, golden and carefree--until a heartbreaking tragedy shattered their happiness. Now, for the sake of an inheritance that will ensure their future, the children must be hidden away out of sight, as if they never existed. Kept on the top floor of their grandmother's vast mansion, their loving mother assures them it will be just for a little while. But as brutal days swell into agonizing months and years, Cathy, Chris, and...

"New England, 1957. The Kindred sisters-Ezra and Cinthy-grew up with an abundance of love. Love from their parents, who let them believe that the stories they tell on stars can come true. Love from their neighbors, the Junketts, the only other Black family in town, whose home is filled with spice-rubbed ribs and ground-shaking hugs. And love for their adopted hometown of Salt Point, a beautiful village perched high up on coastal bluffs. But as the...

Deep in the forests of the Pacific Northwest, isolated from society, a devoted father dedicates his life to transforming his six young children into extraordinary adults. But when a tragedy strikes the family, they are forced to leave this self-created paradise and begin a journey into the outside world that challenges his idea of what it means to be a parent and brings into question everything he's taught them.

"Raymond Jaffe feels like he doesn't belong. Not with his mother's new family. Not as a weekend guest with his father and his father's wife. Not at school, where he's an outcast. After his best friend moves away, Raymond has only two real connections: to the feral cat he's tamed and to a blind ninety-two-year-old woman in his building who's introduced herself with a curious question: Have you seen Luis Velez? Mildred Gutermann, a German Jew who narrowly...

Twenty-three of the most horrifying, hilarious, mind-blowing, stomach-churning tales you'll ever encounter--sometimes all at once.