They have been hinted at - heroes of glorious legend, villains of infamous fable - some have made their presence known, while others only by name: Aurelus, Amali, Termenon, Qualtan, Jesepha, Darksiege, and Shaz. Now, heroes of the past and present will unite against Those That Stand in Shadow. From the steaming jungles of the Third Continent to a Prison Planet forged by angels, the Arch-Mages and their champions will find themselves in a race against time to prevent Shaz and his agents from finding the Dark Ones' demonic fathers and releasing them from bondage. Enemies will become allies, and allies will become foes in the ultimate confrontation with evil that will span two continents, new lands, and new terrors!

Book Five in the Forging of a Knight series! For the sake of a forbidden love, Qualtan will find himself on the run with a Mah-Zakim to free her from her curse, or be consumed by it. No longer a knight, his friends now turned against him, how great will the price be that must be paid? Can a Mah-Zakim truly love back, or has the curse that has followed the First Knight for so long come true at last?

Legend calls them the Ruinous Ones: the Dokahlfar and Vartahlfar. They were evil elves and dwarfish minions that controlled an unknown technological magic. Driven to corrupt all things of goodness and light, the evil elves sought power beyond that of tree and root. They warred against their own kin, the high elves, and were defeated, fleeing into the dark, perhaps never to be heard from again. Honorable and brave knight Qualtan knows little of elves as he sets out on his own quest. His half-orcne friend, Glaive, went missing during a secret assignment from the king, which went awry. Qualtan searches for his lost ally, but in the process he is caught up in the story of the Ruinous Ones and now must uncover the secret of their disappearance-and if they seek to return and claim the power they seek.

"A betrayal from the School leads Darksiege, last of Those That Stand in Shadow, with the means to achieve ultimate power at last. A mighty artifact, divided and cast into different realms, will spell doom if found. Qualtan, Glaive, Cassandra, and Bartholomew will travel to places dark and terrible, including present-day Earth, to prevent Darksiege from gaining the victory he craves, but all is not as it seems. Are Darksiege and his opponents in a true quest, or have they been deceived into playing a much deeper game? Will Qualtan be forced into an unholy alliance with his mortal enemy to uncover the TRUE foe that menaces them all?"--Back cover

A battle against the forces of Those That Stand in Shadow brings an end to an old hero and a beginning for a new one. Together with a half-orcne thief named Glaive, a young warrior named Qualtan must battle through undead hordes, evil druids, shape-shifting Maugs, hungry trolls and more on his journey to become a knight, learning in the process that good and evil are not always what they seem, and that friendship can sometimes go hand in hand with treachery.

Ben Hatke brings back our intrepid space heroine for another delightful sci-fi/fantasy adventure. Zita is determined to find her way home to earth, following the events of the first book. But things are never simple, and certainly never easy, in space. Zita's exploits from her first adventure have made her an intergalactic megastar! But she's about to find out that fame doesn't come without a price. And who can you trust when your true self is being eclipsed by your public persona, and you've got a robot doppelganger wreaking havoc . . . while wearing your face? Still, if anyone can find their way through this intractible mess of mistaken identity and alien invaders, it's the indomitable Zita, in Legends of Zita the Spacegirl. Legends of Zita the Spacegirl is one of Kirkus Reviews' Best Children's Books of 2012.

The final adventure! Zita the Spacegirl is back and the odds are stacked high against her. Will everyone's favorite spacegirl prevail?

Edgy, suspenseful, and darkly comic, here is the first novel in a riveting mystery series starring two cranky but brilliant old detectives whose lifelong friendship was forged solving crimes for the London Police Department's Peculiar Crimes Unit. In Full Dark House, Christopher Fowler tells the story of both their first and last case—and how along the way the unlikely pair of crime fighters changed the face of detection. A present-day bombing rips through London and claims the life of eighty-year-old detective Arthur Bryant. For his partner John May, it means the end of a partnership that lasted over half-a-century and an eerie echo back to the Blitz of World War II when they first met. Desperately searching for clues to the killer’s identity, May finds his old friend’s notes of their very first case and becomes convinced that the past has returned . . . with a killing vengeance. It begins when a dancer in a risque new production of Orpheus in Hell is found without her feet. Suddenly, the young detectives are plunged in a bizarre gothic mystery that will push them to their limits—and beyond. For in a city shaken by war, a faceless killer is stalking London's theaters, creating his own kind of sinister drama. And it will take Arthur Bryant’s unorthodox techniques and John May’s dogged police work to catch a criminal whose ability to escape detection seems almost supernatural—a murderer who even decades later seems to have claimed the life of one of them . . . and is ready to claim the other. Filled with startling twists, unforgettable characters, and a mystery that will keep you guessing, Full Dark House is a witty, heartbreaking, and all-too-human thriller about the hunt for an inhuman killer.

In Victorian London at the height of the industrial revolution, Horatio Lyle is a former Special Constable with a passion for science and invention. He's also an occasional, but reluctant, sleuth. The truth is that he'd rather be in his lab tinkering with dangerous chemicals and odd machinery than running around the cobbled streets of London trying to track down stolen goods. But when Her Majesty's Government calls, Horatio swaps his microscope for a magnifying glass, fills his pockets with things that explode and sallies forth to unravel a mystery of a singularly extraordinary nature. Thrown together with a reformed (i.e. 'caught') pickpocket called Tess, and a rebellious (within reason) young gentleman called Thomas, Lyle and his faithful hound, Tate, find themselves pursuing an ancient Chinese plate, a conspiracy that reaches to the highest levels of polite society and a dangerous enemy who may not even be human. Solving the crime will be hard enough - surviving would be a bonus...

Originally built to house the workers of Victorian London, Balaklava Street is now an oasis in the heart of Kentish Town and ripe for gentrification. But then the body of an elderly woman is found at Number 5. Her death would appear to have been peaceful but for the fact that her throat is full of river water. It falls to the Met's Peculiar Crimes Unit, led by London's longest-serving detectives, Arthur Bryant and John May, to search for something resembling a logical solution. Their initial investigations draw a blank and Bryant's attention is diverted into strange and arcane new territory, while May finds himself in hot water when he attempts to save the reputation of an academic whose knowledge of the city's forgotten underground rivers looks set to ruin his career. In the meantime, the new owner of Number 5 is increasingly unsettled by the damp in the basement of her home, the particularly resilient spiders and the ghostly sound of rushing water . . . Pooling their information to investigate hitherto undiscovered secrets of the city, Bryant and May make some sinister connections and realize that, in a London filled with the rich, the poor and the dispossessed, there's still something a desperate individual is willing to kill for - and kill again to protect. With the PCU facing an uncertain future, the death toll mounts and two of British fiction's most enigmatic detectives must face madness, greed and revenge, armed only with their wits, their own idiosyncratic practices and a plentiful supply of boiled sweets, in a wickedly sinuous mystery that goes to the heart of every London home.