Cat doesn't mind living in the shadow of his sister, Gwendolen, the most promising young witch ever seen on Coven Street. But trouble starts brewing the moment the two orphans are summoned to live in Chrestomanci Castle. Frustrated that the witches of the castle refuse to acknowledge her talents, Gwendolen conjures up a scheme that could throw whole worlds out of whack.

The mysterious Stalkers show up at almost the same instant 12-year-old Aiden Cain’s grandmother dies. Following his grandmother’s instructions, Aiden decides to seek out a powerful sorcerer at Melstone House. Yet when he arrives, he discovers the man died a year earlier. Melstone House now belongs to the sorcerer’s adult grandson Andrew, who agrees to help Aiden with the Stalker problem.

A Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor Book and ALA Notable and Best of the Year in Young Adult Fiction, Howl's Moving Castle is by acclaimed fantasy writer Diane Wynne Jones and was transformed into an Academy Award nominated animated motion picture by Hayao Miyazaki. On a rare venture out from her step-mother's hat shop, Sophie attracts the attention of a witch, who casts a terrible spell transforming the young girl into an old crone.

Polly has two sets of memories.... One is normal: school, home, friends. The other, stranger memories begin nine years ago, when she was 10 and gate-crashed an odd funeral in the mansion near her grandmother's house. Polly's just beginning to recall the sometimes marvelous, sometimes frightening adventures she embarked on with Tom Lynn after that. And then she did something terrible, and everything changed. But what did she do? Why can't she remember? Polly must uncover the secret, or her true love - and perhaps Polly herself - will be lost.

Mr. Chesney operates Pilgrim Parties, a tour group that takes paying participants into an outer realm where the inhabitants play frightening and foreboding roles. The time has come to end the staged madness...but can it really be stopped?

Alanna of Trebond is no ordinary girl: her dream is to become a knight. So she disguises herself as a boy and begins training at the palace of King Roald. Alanna quickly finds out that the road to knighthood is not an easy one, but her skills and stubborness help her become friends with Prince Jonathan and his followers. At the same time, Alanna makes an enemy of the prince's uncle, the overly charming Duke Roger.

Half-witch Kiki never runs from a challenge. So when her 13th birthday arrives, she's eager to follow a witch's tradition: choose a new town to call home for one year. Brimming with confidence, Kiki flies to the seaside village of Koriko and expects that her powers will easily bring happiness to the townspeople.

A delightfully funny, fantastically inventive collection of twenty unearthed short stories by Sir Terry Pratchett, the award-winning and bestselling author and creator of the phenomenally successful Discworld fantasy series. These rediscovered tales were written by Terry Pratchett under a pseudonym for British newspapers during the 1970s and 1980s. The stories have never been attributed to him until now, and might never have been found—were it not for the efforts of a few dedicated fans.

Librarian Sylvia Ashe knows nothing about her past, having grown up without a father and a mother who refused to discuss him. When she stumbles upon a diary that suggests she's descended from magicians, she's skeptical. After all, magicians are special, and she's just an ordinary woman who loves books. She seeks answers from a member of the most prominent family of magicians, but she quickly learns that finding the truth won't be easy, especially when he turns out to be as artless as her, and more compelling and dangerous than books.

Somewhere on the frontier between thought and reality exists the Discworld, a parallel time and place that might sound and smell very much like our own, but which looks completely different. Particularly as it’s carried though space on the back of a giant turtle (sex unknown). It plays by different rules. But then, some things are the same everywhere. The Disc’s very existence is about to be threatened by a strange new blight: the world’s first tourist, upon whose survival rests the peace and prosperity of the land.

Fourteen-year-old Mona isn't like the wizards charged with defending the city. She can't control lightning or speak to water. Her familiar is a sourdough starter, and her magic only works on bread. She has a comfortable life in her aunt's bakery making gingerbread men dance. But Mona's life is turned upside down when she finds a dead body on the bakery floor. An assassin is stalking the streets of Mona's city, preying on magic folk, and it appears that Mona is his next target. And in an embattled city suddenly bereft of wizards, the assassin may be the least of Mona's worries.

When Sparrowhawk casts a spell that saves his village from destruction at the hands of the invading Kargs, Ogion, the Mage of Re Albi, encourages the boy to apprentice himself in the art of wizardry. So, at the age of 13, the boy receives his true name - Ged - and gives himself over to the gentle tutelage of the Master Ogion. But impatient with the slowness of his studies and infatuated with glory, Ged embarks for the Island of Roke, where the highest arts of wizardry are taught.

A nightmarish danger threatens from the other side of reality. . . . Armed with only a frying pan and her common sense, young witch-to-be Tiffany Aching must defend her home against the monsters of Fairyland. Luckily she has some very unusual help: the local Nac Mac Feegle—aka the Wee Free Men—a clan of fierce, sheep-stealing, sword-wielding, six-inch-high blue men.

I decided that Orion Lake needed to die after the second time he saved my life. Everyone loves Orion Lake. Everyone else, that is. Far as I’m concerned, he can keep his flashy combat magic to himself. I’m not joining his pack of adoring fans. I don’t need help surviving the Scholomance, even if they do. Forget the hordes of monsters and cursed artifacts; I’m probably the most dangerous thing in the place. Just give me a chance and I’ll level mountains and kill untold millions, making myself the dark queen of the world.

Neil Gaiman has long been inspired by ancient mythology in creating the fantastical realms of his fiction. Now he turns his attention back to the source, presenting a bravura rendition of the great northern tales. In Norse Mythology, Gaiman fashions primeval stories into a novelistic arc that begins with the genesis of the legendary nine worlds; delves into the exploits of the deities, dwarves, and giants; and culminates in Ragnarok, the twilight of the gods and the rebirth of a new time and people.

Cat doesn't mind living in the shadow of his sister, Gwendolen, the most promising young witch ever seen on Coven Street. But trouble starts brewing the moment the two orphans are summoned to live in Chrestomanci Castle. Frustrated that the witches of the castle refuse to acknowledge her talents, Gwendolen conjures up a scheme that could throw whole worlds out of whack.

From the internationally acclaimed best-selling author of Code Name Verity comes a stunning new story of pearls, love and murder. Sixteen-year-old Julie Beaufort-Stuart is returning to her family's ancestral home in Perthshire for one last summer. It is not an idyllic return to childhood. Her grandfather's death has forced the sale of the house and estate, and this will be a summer of good-byes. Not least to the McEwen family - Highland travellers who have been part of the landscape for as long as anyone can remember.

In this coming of age story, Dodie Smith introduces the visionary and eccentric character of seventeen-year-old Cassandra Mortmain. The youngest daughter in a family of impoverished artists, it is her imagination and writing that takes us away from the ramshackle old English castle where they live, and towards an intriguing tale of husband-hunting and light-hearted sibling rivalry.

Harry Potter has never even heard of Hogwarts when the letters start dropping on the doormat at number four, Privet Drive. Addressed in green ink on yellowish parchment with a purple seal, they are swiftly confiscated by his grisly aunt and uncle. Then, on Harry's eleventh birthday, a great beetle-eyed giant of a man called Rubeus Hagrid bursts in with some astonishing news: Harry Potter is a wizard, and he has a place at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. An incredible adventure is about to begin!

When Molly shows up on Castle Hangnail's doorstep to fill the vacancy for a wicked witch, the castle's minions are understandably dubious. After all, she is 12 years old, barely five feet tall, and quite polite. (The minions are used to tall, demanding evil sorceresses with razor-sharp cheekbones.) But the castle desperately needs a master, or else the Board of Magic will decommission it, leaving all the minions without the home they love.

Three very different girls sign up as trainee nurses at a big London teaching hospital in 1934. Dora leaves her overcrowded, squalid working-class home for a better life. But has she got what it takes to keep up with other, better-educated girls? And will her hated stepfather ever let her go? Helen is born for the job; her brother is a doctor, her all-powerful mother a hospital trustee. But will Helen’s secret misery be her downfall? An aristocratic rebel, Millie’s carefree attitude will find her up in front of Matron again and again. Will she ever care enough to make a nurse? Or will she go back to the glamorous life she was born to?

At the end of her first unsuccessful season out in society, Lady Georgiana has all but given up on attracting a suitable man - until she receives an invitation to a masked Halloween ball at Broxley Manor. Georgie is uncertain why she was invited, until she learns that the royal family intends to marry her off to a foreign prince, one reputed to be mad.

Nominated for a 2011 Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album For Children. Who better to read the novel of the new Nanny McPhee film than Nanny McPhee herself, Emma Thompson, who also wrote both the screenplay and the novel. This delightful audio edition captures the magic and the mayhem of Nanny McPhee’s brand new adventure – it will have you laughing out loud!

Imagine an alternate universe where romance and technology reign. Where tinkerers and dreamers craft and recraft a world of automatons, ornate clockworks, calculating machines, and other marvels that. Where scientists and schoolgirls, fair folk and Romans, intergalactic bandits, and intrepid orphans - decked out in corsets, clockwerk suits, and tall black boots - solve dastardly crimes, escape from monstrous predicaments, consult oracles, and hover over volcanoes in steam-powered airships.

In 1896, in a pilgrim church in the Alps, an abandoned baby girl is found by a cook and a housemaid. They take her home, and Annika grows up in the servants' quarters of a house belonging to three eccentric Viennese professors. She is happy there but dreams of the day when her real mother will come to find her. One day a glamorous stranger arrives at the door.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Literature, Margaret Mitchell's great novel of the South is one of the most popular books ever written. Within six months of its publication in 1936, Gone With the Wind had sold a million copies. To date, it has been translated into 25 languages, and more than 28 million copies have been sold. Here are the characters that have become symbols of passion and desire....

Liverpool, 1941. Troubled by a dark family history and the pain of seeing her country torn apart by war, young June Lavender finds new hope when she takes a job at the Dr Barnardo's children's home. There she meets Lizzie McRae, a little girl who is the spitting image of June's sister, who died tragically years before. Against the matron's wishes, the two girls form an unexpected bond as June tries to get the traumatised orphan to speak.

British airman Dym Ingleford is convinced that the young German prisoner, Max Eckermann, is his brother Anthony, who was kidnapped years before. Raised in the Nazi ideology, Tony has by chance tumbled into British hands. Dym has brought him back, at least temporarily, to the family he neither remembers nor will acknowledge as his own.

Life in a small town can be pretty boring when everyone avoids you like the plague. But after their father unwittingly sends them to stay with an aunt who’s away on holiday, the Hardscrabble children take off on an adventure that begins in the seedy streets of London and ends in a peculiar sea village where legend has it a monstrous creature lives who is half boy and half animal.

In this wickedly dark, unusual, and compelling novel, Ellen Potter masterfully tells the tale of one deliciously strange family and a secret that changes everything.

A long-forgotten secret, a scandalous attraction and a place where two women's lives are changed forever. 1926: Violet Armstrong is one of the few remaining members of staff working at the grand Evergreen Spa Hotel as it closes down over winter. Only a handful of guests are left, including the heir to a rich grazing family, his sister and her suave suitor. When a snowstorm moves in, the hotel is cut off and they are all trapped. No-one could have predicted what would unfold.

Cat doesn't mind living in the shadow of his sister, Gwendolen, the most promising young witch ever seen on Coven Street. But trouble starts brewing the moment the two orphans are summoned to live in Chrestomanci Castle. Frustrated that the witches of the castle refuse to acknowledge her talents, Gwendolen conjures up a scheme that could throw whole worlds out of whack.

A Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor Book and ALA Notable and Best of the Year in Young Adult Fiction, Howl's Moving Castle is by acclaimed fantasy writer Diane Wynne Jones and was transformed into an Academy Award nominated animated motion picture by Hayao Miyazaki. On a rare venture out from her step-mother's hat shop, Sophie attracts the attention of a witch, who casts a terrible spell transforming the young girl into an old crone.

The mysterious Stalkers show up at almost the same instant 12-year-old Aiden Cain’s grandmother dies. Following his grandmother’s instructions, Aiden decides to seek out a powerful sorcerer at Melstone House. Yet when he arrives, he discovers the man died a year earlier. Melstone House now belongs to the sorcerer’s adult grandson Andrew, who agrees to help Aiden with the Stalker problem.

Mr. Chesney operates Pilgrim Parties, a tour group that takes paying participants into an outer realm where the inhabitants play frightening and foreboding roles. The time has come to end the staged madness...but can it really be stopped?

Polly has two sets of memories.... One is normal: school, home, friends. The other, stranger memories begin nine years ago, when she was 10 and gate-crashed an odd funeral in the mansion near her grandmother's house. Polly's just beginning to recall the sometimes marvelous, sometimes frightening adventures she embarked on with Tom Lynn after that. And then she did something terrible, and everything changed. But what did she do? Why can't she remember? Polly must uncover the secret, or her true love - and perhaps Polly herself - will be lost.