What sort of madman would unleash an army of stilt-walking, laser-beaming, thoroughly angry whales upon the world? Who cares! All that matters is that his dastardly plan be foiled. Lucky for Lily Gefelty, her two best friends are the intrepid stars of their own middle-grade series novels: Jasper Dash (better know as the Boy Technonaut) and Katie Mulligan (beloved by millions as the heroine of the Horror Hollow series). It's going to take all their smarts to stop this insane, inane plot from succeeding.

Charlie Reade looks like a regular high school kid, great at baseball and football, a decent student. But he carries a heavy load. His mom was killed in a horrific accident when he was seven, and grief drove his dad to drink. Charlie learned how to take care of himself—and his dad. When Charlie is seventeen, he meets a dog named Radar and her aging master, Howard Bowditch, a recluse in a big house at the top of a big hill, with a locked shed in the backyard. Sometimes strange sounds emerge from that shed.

Twelve-year-old Percy Jackson is about to be kicked out of boarding school...again. No matter how hard he tries, he can't seem to stay out of trouble. But can he really be expected to stand by and watch while a bully picks on his scrawny best friend? Or not defend himself against his pre-algebra teacher when she turns into a monster and tries to kill him? Of course, no one believes Percy about the monster incident; he's not even sure he believes himself.

The city of Ember was built as a last refuge for the human race. Two hundred years later, the great lamps that light the city are beginning to flicker. When Lina finds part of an ancient message, she's sure it holds a secret that will save the city. She and her friend Doon must decipher the message before the lights go out on Ember forever! This stunning debut novel offers refreshingly clear writing and fascinating, original characters.

The Seven Wonders adventures continue in this bind-up of The Select and The Orphan. The Select tells the story of thirteen-year-old Burt Wenders, the first documented carrier of the G7W gene, and his fated voyage to the island that would eventually come to house the Karai Institute. In The Orphan, learn the story of Daria, orphaned at a young age and enslaved by the Babylonians, and her valiant battle to escape the only city she's ever called home. These titles are together for the first time ever.

Three years have passed since the Jamaicans caused the apocalypse, and things in post-Armageddon Chicago have settled into a new kind of normal. Unfortunately, that "normal" includes collapsing skyscrapers, bands of bloodthirsty maniacs, and a dwindling cache of survival supplies. After watching his family, friends, and most of the non-sadistic elements of society crumble around him, Patrick decides it's time to cross one last item off his bucket list. He's going to Disney World.

R. L. Stine - the godfather of Goosebumps - and some of the most popular authors today bring an unrivaled mastery of all things fearsome, frightening, and fantabulous to this terrifying anthology of all-new scary short stories.

Zimbabwe, 2194. General Matsika's three children sneak out of the house on a forbidden adventure and disappear. Immediately,the general calls Africa's most unusual detectives: the Ear, the Eye, and the Arm. Together these three detectives combine their superhuman powers to find the missing children. It's a dangerous mission that leads them from the seedy streets of the Cow's Guts to the swaying top of the Mile-High MacIlwaine Hotel.

Twelve-year-old Addison Cooke just wishes something exciting would happen to him. His aunt and uncle, both world-famous researchers, travel to the ends of the earth searching for hidden treasure, dodging dangerous robbers along the way, while Addison is stuck in school all day. Luckily for Addison, adventure has a way of finding the Cookes.

The lovable underdog Lewis Barnavelt and his best friend, Rose Rita, are at it again - investigating the curious (and possibly supernatural?) goings-on in their town of New Zebedee. They get more than they bargained for when a new family moves into the Hawaii House, one of the oddest-looking houses in town, and Lewis and Rose Rita are drawn into a mystery involving forces far beyond the shores of their imagination. Why are there strange drumbeats emanating from the top floor of the Hawaii House? And why is Lewis having dreams about Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of fire?

First setting: an all-male prep school in Arizona, where two sensitive freshmen form a bond based on their interest in magic tricks. Second setting: the labyrinthine house of a weird magician uncle in New England, where the two boys spend a memorable summer being trained in the art of illusion. Or is it real magic? Third setting: an alternate world where dark forces are at play - forces that first show up at the school, but intensify their power the summer.

Molly Moon returns...and bumps into earlier versions of herself, four of them, to be exact, all kidnapped and transported back in time to nineteenth-century India by Molly's most fearsome nemesis yet, an insane maharaja. Molly foiled his plans once already, by stopping Primo Cell from becoming president of the United States. This time around, the maharaja is determined to alter the course of history. The only thing standing in his way is Molly and her brave pug, Petula.

On the way home one day, 13-year-old Keith Croft stops at a neighbor’s yard sale and discovers a book for Crypts & Creepers that the lonely old woman says belonged to her granddaughter who disappeared without a trace. Days after he convinces his friends to try this bizarre game that doesn’t require electronics, strange noises in his closet wake him. His increasing inability to focus on anything other than a girl who vanished before he was born - and his obsession with her NPC ranger - drives him to dig deeper into the past, searching for what really happened to her.

One morning, Erec's mother is missing. The force inside Erec commands him to find her, leading him on an adventure that will change him forever. When he arrives in Alypium, a hidden world where old knowledge of magic is kept, Erec learns that his mother and the entire kingdom are in peril. And he might be the only one who can save them.

When thirteen-year-old Ronan Truelove’s seemingly ordinary mom snatches him from school, then sets off on a high speed car chase, Ronan is shocked. His quiet, nerdy dad has been kidnapped? And the kidnappers are after him, too? His mom, he quickly learns, is anything but ordinary. In fact, she’s a member of an ancient order of knights, the Blood Guard, a sword-wielding secret society sworn to protect the Pure — thirty-six noble souls whose safety is crucial if the world as we know it is to survive.

The Seven Wonders adventures continue in this bind-up of The Select and The Orphan. The Select tells the story of thirteen-year-old Burt Wenders, the first documented carrier of the G7W gene, and his fated voyage to the island that would eventually come to house the Karai Institute. In The Orphan, learn the story of Daria, orphaned at a young age and enslaved by the Babylonians, and her valiant battle to escape the only city she's ever called home. These titles are together for the first time ever.

Zimbabwe, 2194. General Matsika's three children sneak out of the house on a forbidden adventure and disappear. Immediately,the general calls Africa's most unusual detectives: the Ear, the Eye, and the Arm. Together these three detectives combine their superhuman powers to find the missing children. It's a dangerous mission that leads them from the seedy streets of the Cow's Guts to the swaying top of the Mile-High MacIlwaine Hotel.

Molly Moon returns...and bumps into earlier versions of herself, four of them, to be exact, all kidnapped and transported back in time to nineteenth-century India by Molly's most fearsome nemesis yet, an insane maharaja. Molly foiled his plans once already, by stopping Primo Cell from becoming president of the United States. This time around, the maharaja is determined to alter the course of history. The only thing standing in his way is Molly and her brave pug, Petula.

What does it take to become the greatest secret agent the world has ever known? In this thrilling prequel to the James Bond series, readers meet a 13-year-old schoolboy whose inquisitive mind and determination set him on a path that will one day take him all over the world, in pursuit of the most dangerous criminals known to man.

With tales from Laird Barron, Stephen King, John Langan, Peter Straub, and many others, and featuring Datlow’s comprehensive overview of the year in horror, now, more than ever, The Best Horror of the Year provides the petrifying horror fiction readers have come to expect - and enjoy.

Summer 1977. The Blyton Summer Detective Club (of Blyton Hills, a small mining town in Oregon's Zoinx River Valley) solved their final mystery and unmasked the elusive Sleepy Lake monster - another low-life fortune hunter trying to get his dirty hands on the legendary riches hidden in Deboën Mansion. And he would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for those meddling kids.

Britney Crosby thinks her cousin Ethan is pretty weird - and she happens to be right. Ethan won't stop tormenting Britney with an old ventriloquist's dummy. And the puppet has plans for Britney, too!

In the blink of an eye, everyone disappears. Gone. Except for the young. There are teens, but not one single adult. Just as suddenly, there are no phones, no Internet, no television. No way to get help. And no way to figure out what's happened. Hunger threatens. Bullies rule. A sinister creature lurks. Animals are mutating. And the teens themselves are changing, developing new talents - unimaginable, dangerous, deadly powers - that grow stronger by the day. It's a terrifying new world.

When 15-year-old Beck Phillips travels by train to the secluded village of Kingsplot to live with his wealthy but estranged uncle, Beck discovers some dark family secrets. A buried basement, a forbidden wall, an old book of family history with odd references to...dragons? Beck's life is about to be changed forever in this suspenseful tale about the destructive nature of greed and the courage to make things right.

The best stories pull readers in and keep them turning the pages, eager to discover more—to find the answer to the question: "And then what happened?" The true hallmark of great literature is great imagination, and as Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio prove with this outstanding collection, when it comes to great fiction, all genres are equal.

Life is comfortable for 12-year-old T'Challa in his home of Wakanda, an isolated, technologically advanced African nation. When he's not learning how to rule a kingdom from his father - the reigning Black Panther - or testing out the latest tech, he's off breaking rules with his best friend, M'Baku. But as conflict brews near Wakanda, T'Challa's father makes a startling announcement: he's sending T'Challa and M'Baku to school in America.

It is Labor Day weekend in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and a boy and a girl collide on a dark street at two thirty in the morning; Lesh, who wears black, listens to metal, and plays MMOs; Svetlana, who embroiders her skirts, listens to Björk and Berlioz, and dungeon masters her own RPG. They should pick themselves up, continue on their way, and never talk to each other again. But they don't. This is a story of two people who do not belong in each other's lives, and who find each other at a time when they desperately need someone who doesn't belong in their lives.

What’s the point in solving murders if we’re all going to die soon, anyway? Detective Hank Palace has faced this question ever since asteroid 2011GV1 hovered into view. There’s no chance left. No hope. Just six precious months until impact. The economy spirals downward while crops rot in the fields. Churches and synagogues are packed. People all over the world are walking off the job—but not Hank Palace. He’s investigating a death by hanging in a city that sees a dozen suicides every week—except this one feels suspicious, and Palace is the only cop who cares.

All of a sudden, the most ordinary things have taken on a sinister edge: a penny on a doormat. An odd man in a brown suit under a streetlamp. The persistent sound of an ax chopping in the middle of the night. He keeps telling himself that this is Seaham, a sleepy seaside town where nothing ever happens. Or at least nothing did, until his dad’s construction company opened up the cliff beneath the old—some say cursed—Langdon place.

Edgar Award nominee Victor Gischler “specializes in morbid humor, dark sarcasm, and comic noir, complete with violence and mayhem” ( Library Journal). Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse picks up 10 years after the end of the world. Former insurance salesman Mortimer Tate leaves his secluded cabin and discovers a desolate landscape complete with cowboys, bandits, and cannibals, where the only traces of civilization are found at Joey Armageddon’s Sassy-a-Go-Go club.