New mother

It's the first winter after the Monster Apocalypse. For Jack and his buddies, that means sled catapults, epic snowball battles, and one monstrous Christmas celebration. But their winter wonderland turns dark when a villainess begins hunting them. And this villainess is different - she’s a human. When the villainess steals Jack's prized monster-slaying tool, the Louisville Slicer, he vows to get it back. But it won’t be easy. Jack and his friends soon discover that the Louisville Slicer is the key to a dark plan that threatens the entire world - and beyond.

Ana Dakkar is a freshman at Harding-Pencroft Academy, a five-year high school that graduates the best marine scientists, naval warriors, navigators, and underwater explorers in the world. Ana's parents died while on a scientific expedition two years ago, and the only family's she's got left is her older brother, Dev, also a student at HP. Ana's freshman year culminates with the class' weekend trial at sea, the details of which have been kept secret. She only hopes she has what it'll take to succeed.

For Bixby Alexander Tam (nicknamed Bat), life tends to be full of surprises - some of them good, some not so good. Today, though, is a good-surprise day. Bat's mom, a veterinarian, has brought home a baby skunk, which she needs to take care of until she can hand him over to a wild-animal shelter. But the minute Bat meets the kit, he knows they belong together. And he's got one month to show his mom that a baby skunk might just make a pretty terrific pet.

K2 O’Hero is a seemingly ordinary boy—after all, he and his twin sister, Izzabird, have been sworn to keep their family's Magical history a secret. Not even their infuriating stepsiblings, Theo and Mabel, know that Magic exists. They believe K2 to be the most hopeless person they have ever known. But K2 has a secret gift: He draws maps of worlds that are beyond the wildest imaginations. Worlds with six hundred moons, burning rivers, and dark, twisty jungles alive with plants that hunt by the smell of fear. But what K2 doesn’t know is that the maps he draws are real.