Family Life Science

Mara Dyer once believed she could run from her past. She can’t. She used to think her problems were all in her head. They aren’t. She couldn’t imagine that after everything she’s been through, the boy she loves would still be keeping secrets. She’s wrong.

Lili St. Crow’s darkly exhilarating Strange Angels novels have won a devoted readership. In the third book of the series, Crow’s unusual heroine, Dru Anderson, has been through the ringer, what with a missing mother, her father turning all undead on her, and forces of evil that just won’t seem to let her be. On the run from a predator with a taste for her blood, Dru can count on help from Graves and Christophe—but they just might do more harm than good as they battle for her affections.

When Olivia Abbott moves to town, she's excited to join the cheerleading team and make new friends. Then she meets Ivy Vega. At first, Ivy, pale and dressed all in black, looks like Olivia's opposite. Then the girls look beyond the glittery pink blush and thick black eyeliner to discover they're identical - identical twins! Olivia and Ivy are brimming with plans to switch places and pull every twin trick in the book. But Olivia soon discovers that she and Ivy aren't exactly the same. Ivy's a vampire. And she's not the only one in town.

Something very strange starts happening in Nightshade the summer that the eldest Giordano sister, Rose, gets a job working at Dr. Franken's research laboratory. People are starting to see double. Doppelgngers of Nightshade residents are popping up all over town. Daisy, Rose, and Poppy think it's a coincidence, until the rumors start that their father, who disappeared several years ago, has been spotted in town.

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres and the New York Times best-selling Last Hundred Years Trilogy, a captivating, brilliantly imaginative story of three extraordinary animals - and a young boy - whose lives intersect in Paris.

A witch, an evil orphanage caretaker, and an enchanted house. But in this contemporary retelling of the classic tale Hansel and Gretel, twins Hansen and Gracie are not like other children. They have a connection that no one else can understand. But will it be enough to save them from the evil they encounter?

Twelve-year-old Gordy Stitser is one of the few people who knows the truth about the secret society of potion masters, because not only is Gordy's mom on the Board of Ruling Elixirists Worldwide (BREW), but she has also been training Gordy in the art of potion-making. Gordy is a natural, and every day he sneaks down to the basement lab to invent new potions using exotic ingredients like fire ant eggs, porcupine quills, and Bosnian tickling juice. One afternoon, Gordy receives a mysterious package containing an extremely rare potion known as "The Eternity Elixir."

Rest and relaxation—that’s what Nita Callahan thinks she’s going to get when she and her partner-wizard Kit Rodriguez go on a “cultural exchange” program. But nothing about wizardry—not even vacation—is ever quite that simple!

Twelve-year-old Mallie knows better than to dream. In Coal Top, you live the story you're given: Boys toil in the mines, and girls work as servants. But it wasn't always this way. Before the Dust came, the people of Coal Top could weave starlight into cloth. They'd wear these dreaming clothes to sleep and wake up with the courage to seek adventure. So when Mallie is chosen for a dangerous competition in which daring (and ideally, orphaned) children train flying horses, she jumps at the chance. Maybe she'll change her story. Maybe she'll even find the magic she needs to dream again.

No one predicted the dragon apocalypse. The dragons came suddenly and decimated the world as we knew it, including New York City. Now, three years later, Noah, his hardcore survivalist father, and a ragtag group of survivors are barely scraping by in this new reality. Kids scavenge not only for materials in abandoned homes but also for leftover books at the library. Adults spend their time establishing a make-shift society and defending their shelter… with any means available. At least for the few months the dragons are hibernating, until it’s no longer safe aboveground.

Return with Portia and her younger brother, Foster, as they rediscover an abandoned summer resort, consisting of deserted crumbling Victorian summer homes surrounding a vanished lake, which is now a swamp.

Christina Lattimore’s family is wealthy and powerful. She attends the best private high school. Yet Christina feels trapped by her family’s expectations. Frustrated and angry at her situation, she pays little attention when a strange car follows her home one night. Its headlights are the last thing she remembers until she wakes up in captivity. Christina is terrified when she realizes kidnappers are holding her for ransom. But after her rescue, she faces an even greater shock. Her family thinks she was an accomplice in her own kidnapping! Can she convince them of her innocence?

Considered by Time magazine to be one of the best fantasy books of all time, Edith Nesbit's Five Children and It follows a tribe of children on their magical adventures during a summer in the English countryside. When a strange, furry creature appears in front of the children and offers a wish a day, the children take advantage of the creature's abilities and discover that their wishes have many unforeseen - and often quite funny - consequences.

The cat that Olive rescues from a flood has a secret: He's not really a cat at all, but an alien who crashed to Earth on a beam of light. The cat, whom Olive names Leonard, was prepared to visit the planet as a human - but something went wrong. Now Leonard may never know what it's like to hold an umbrella, go bowling, or host a dinner party. (And his human jokes still need some work: Knock, knock. Who's there? Just Leonard. It is me.)

Returning from their wizardly holiday, Nita Callaghan and Kit Rodriguez look forward to getting back to their normal routine. But there’s trouble brewing. A strange darkness is befalling older wizards across the world, stealing away their power. Soon, young wizards from Earth and beyond must join forces to stop an unimaginable invasion—and defend the very essence of wizardry itself.

A statue, a coin, an old book - they look as dusty as everything else in the Faulkner Antiquarian Bookstore. But when Sam Falkner slips the coin into the statue, he's swept back to Scotland in A.D. 900 - the age of the Vikings. He must find both the statue and another coin in order to escape. It's the first journey in an adventure that will take him to ancient Egypt, World War I, even Dracula's castle...and a mystery that will end only if Sam can find his father in time - literally.

Newbery Medal winner Laura Amy Schlitz's gothic novel in the grand Victorian tradition, Spledors and Glooms, is set in London and centered around the disappearance of a 12-year-old girl, who goes missing. Two children realize it is their guardian, a Venetian-born puppeteer and magician, who has kidnapped her and used his dark powers to imprison her mind and body in the form of a puppet and strive to return her to human form.

Best-selling, critically acclaimed author Mark Helprin's work has drawn favorable comparisons to an elite group of literary legends, including James Joyce, Franz Kafka, Edgar Allan Poe, and Thomas Mann. Helprin's sheer comic brilliance shines in this ingenious farce.

When their mother’s new job forces them to move from bustling San Antonio to middle-of-nowhere Aura, Texas, Caitlyn tries to stay positive, focusing on meeting new people and having new adventures. Cassie, on the other hand, is convinced that it’s only a matter of time until they’ll be sick of Aura and ready to move back to the big city. But being the new kids isn’t their only challenge. The girls start experiencing strange visions, and they must work together to change the future before it can happen.

An extraordinary quest, a magician’s powers, and the journey to find a kingdom.... Timoken is a prince from a secret kingdom. Before his birth, a forest-jinni bestowed upon him two magical gifts: a cloak made from the web of the last moon spider, and a potion called Alixir, the water of eternal life. Yet in exchange for the protection of these gifts, Timoken will always have one foot in the world of men and the other in the strange world of magic.