A continuation of the purported journal of an eight-year-old adventurer, as he faces myriad strange creatures in the underground world of Subterranea.

Charlie Small’s fifth journal describes his adventures in a strange subterranean world. Help! Charlie is trapped miles below the earth’s surface in the utterly unbelievable UNDERWORLD. Will he ever escape? Read this journal to find out! You’ll also discover . . . • How he escaped a hair-raising encounter with a terrifying Troglodite! • What to do if you get trapped in the web of a spitting Spidion! • Why the king of Subterranea is so blooming miserable! Middle graders, especially boys, will connect with this next installment about the boy adventurer who has been traveling for 400 years!

Gentleman adventurer Nick Ward has tracked down a third installment of Charlie Small’s incredible life story. The battered journal was found beneath the seat of a bus shelter in Pimlico. Passed into the hands of a collector of dubious repute, it took swift work from Nick to prevent the story from vanishing forever! Having finally escaped from the perfidious pirates, Charlie travels though icy waters and hair-raising mountains and encounters man-eating bats, a wild dog whose bark is worse than his bite, and ultimately finds himself ensnared by the evil Puppet Master, a figure of pure unadulterated evil. Will Charlie manage to escape his clutches, or will he remain a puppet forever, never to adventure again? Charlie Small is a keen amateur explorer. His interests include climbing trees, collecting things, playing computer games, and football. He also enjoys conversing in the secret language of the gorillas. His present whereabouts is unknown, but we understand that he’s hoping to be home in time for tea.

No one knows the full story of Charlie Small. His battered journal was found washed up on a remote, windswept shore. And at first we thought it an elaborate hoax. Surely no eight-year-old could have had so many wild adventures, witnessed so many extraordinary things, lived such an incredible life - and still only be eight. And yet . . . there was something so vivid in the telling, that we were persuaded to send the journal for analysis. The results were absolutely astonishing. Everything in the journal of Charlie Small is true. He really has wrestled a deadly river croc, ridden a steam-powered rhino and been tribal chief in a city of gorillas. And countless other things besides. And . . . not only that . . . even though Charlie Small is only eight, he must have lived for over four hundred years!

Charlie Small’s second journal of his adventures was found encased in ice, high on a glacial plateau in the Himalayas. It details even more remarkable deeds and thrilling acts aboard the Jolly Roger with the dastardly lady-pirates of perfidy–and a lot more besides. Charlie Small is a keen amateur explorer. His interests include climbing trees, collecting things, playing computer games, and football. He also enjoys conversing in the secret language of the gorillas. His present whereabouts is unknown, but we understand that he’s hoping to be home in time for tea.

Those stories you hear? The ones about things that only come out at night? Things that feed on blood, feed on us? Got news for you: they’re true. Only it’s not like the movies or old man Stoker’s storybook. It’s worse. Especially if you happen to be one of them. Just ask Joe Pitt. There’s a shambler on the loose. Some fool who got himself infected with a flesh-eating bacteria is lurching around, trying to munch on folks’ brains. Joe hates shamblers, but he’s still the one who has to deal with them. That’s just the kind of life he has. Except afterlife might be better word. From the Battery to the Bronx, and from river to river, Manhattan is crawling with Vampyres. Joe is one of them, and he’s not happy about it. Yeah, he gets to be stronger and faster than you, and he’s tough as nails and hard to kill. But spending his nights trying to score a pint of blood to feed the Vyrus that’s eating at him isn’t his idea of a good time. And Joe doesn’t make it any easier on himself. Going his own way, refusing to ally with the Clans that run the undead underside of Manhattan–it ain’t easy. It’s worse once he gets mixed up with the Coalition–the city’s most powerful Clan–and finds himself searching for a poor little rich girl who’s gone missing in Alphabet City. Now the Coalition and the girl’s high-society parents are breathing down his neck, anarchist Vampyres are pushing him around, and a crazy Vampyre cult is stalking him. No time to complain, though. Got to find that girl and kill that shambler before the whip comes down . . . and before the sun comes up.

IT IS THE YEAR ONE-KNIFE IN TENOCHTITLAN - THE CAPITAL OF THE AZTECS. The end of the world is kept at bay only by the magic of human sacrifice. A Priestess disappears from an empty room drenched in blood. Acatl, High Priest of the Dead must find her, or break the boundaries between the worlds of th living and the dead. But how do you find someone, living or dead, in a world where blood sacrifices are an everyday occurrence and the very gods stalk the streets? File Under: Fantasy [ Aztec Mystery | Locked Room | Human Sacrifice | The Dead Walk! ]

With his teaching career derailed by tragedy and his slacker days numbered, Webster Fillmore Goodhue makes an unlikely move and joins Clean Team, charged with tidying up L.A.'s grisly crime scenes. For Web, it's a steady gig, and he soon finds himself sponging a Malibu suicide's brains from a bathroom mirror and flirting with the man's bereaved and beautiful daughter. Then things get weird: The dead man's daughter asks a favor. Every cell in Web's brain tells him to turn her down, but something makes him hit the Harbor Freeway at midnight to help her however he can. Soon enough it's Web who needs the help when gun-toting California cowboys start showing up on his doorstep. What's the deal? Is it something to do with what he cleaned up in that motel room in Carson? Or is it all about the brewing war between rival trauma cleaners? Web doesn't have a clue, but he'll need to get one if he's going to keep from getting his face kicked in. Again. And again. And again.

“Lauren Beukes meets Neil Gaiman” in this twisted urban fantasy about a high school rebel, his bounty hunter companion, and their high-stakes adventures through Cape Town's supernatural underworld (WIRED) Baxter Zevcenko’s life is pretty sweet. He’s making a name for himself as the kingpin of his smut-peddling high-school syndicate, the other gangs are staying out of his business, and he’s dating the girl of his dreams, Esme. But when Esme gets kidnapped, things start to get seriously weird, and the only man drunk enough to help is a bearded, booze-soaked, supernatural bounty hunter that goes by the name of Jackson ‘Jackie’ Ronin. Plunged into the increasingly bizarre landscape of Cape Town’s supernatural underworld, Baxter and Ronin team up to save Esme. On a journey that takes them through the realms of impossibility, they must face every conceivable nightmare to get her back, including the odd brush with the Apocalypse.

A biography of cinematic hero Charlie Chan, based on the real-life Chinese immigrant detective, Chang Apana, whose bravado inspired mystery writer Earl Derr Biggers to depict his fictional sleuth as a wisecracking and wise investigator rather than a stereotype.