The New York Times bestseller “The Shadow of the Wind is ultimately a love letter to literature, intended for readers as passionate about storytelling as its young hero.” —Entertainment Weekly (Editor's Choice) “One gorgeous read.” —Stephen King Barcelona, 1945: A city slowly heals in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, and Daniel, an antiquarian book dealer’s son who mourns the loss of his mother, finds solace in a mysterious book entitled The Shadow of the Wind, by one Julián Carax. But when he sets out to find the author’s other works, he makes a shocking discovery: someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book Carax has written. In fact, Daniel may have the last of Carax’s books in existence. Soon Daniel’s seemingly innocent quest opens a door into one of Barcelona’s darkest secrets--an epic story of murder, madness, and doomed love.

The Land of Stories meets Dominican myths and legends come to life in Pilar Ramirez and the Escape from Zafa, a blockbuster contemporary middle-grade fantasy duology starter from Julian Randall. Fans of Tristan Strong and The Storm Runner, here is your next obsession. "A breathtaking journey . . . readers better hold on tight." —Kwame Mbalia, New York Times bestselling author of the Tristan Strong series Twelve-year-old Pilar Violeta “Purp” Ramirez’s world is changing, and she doesn’t care for it one bit. Her Chicago neighborhood is gentrifying and her chores have doubled since her sister, Lorena, left for college. The only constant is Abuela and Mami’s code of silence around her cousin Natasha—who vanished in the Dominican Republic fifty years ago during the Trujillo dictatorship. When Pilar hears that Lorena’s professor studies such disappearances, she hops on the next train to dig deeper into her family's mystery. After snooping around the professor's empty office, she discovers a folder with her cousin’s name on it . . . and gets sucked into the blank page within. She lands on Zafa, an island swarming with coconut-shaped demons, butterfly shapeshifters, and a sinister magical prison where her cousin is being held captive. Pilar will have to go toe-to-toe with the fearsome Dominican boogeyman, El Cuco, if she has any hope of freeing Natasha and getting back home. "Magic awaits around every corner in Zafa. Nonstop action and plenty of heart create a story worth escaping into." —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

On July 28, 1851, Nathaniel Hawthorne's wife Sophia and daughters Una and Rose left their house in Western Massachusetts to visit relatives near Boston. Hawthorne and his five-year-old son Julian stayed behind. How father and son got along over the next three weeks is the subject of this tender and funny extract from Hawthorne's notebooks. "At about six o'clock I looked over the edge of my bed and saw that Julian was awake, peeping sideways at me." Each day starts early and is mostly given over to swimming and skipping stones, berry-picking and subduing armies of thistles. There are lots of questions ("It really does seem as if he has baited me with more questions, references, and observations, than mortal father ought to be expected to endure"), a visit to a Shaker community, domestic crises concerning a pet rabbit, and some poignant moments of loneliness ("I went to bed at about nine and longed for Phoebe"). And one evening Mr. Herman Melville comes by to enjoy a late-night discussion of eternity over cigars. With an introduction by Paul Auster that paints a beautifully observed, intimate picture of the Hawthornes at home, this little-known, true-life story by a great American writer emerges from obscurity to shine a delightful light upon family life—then and now.

Noble born, Julian Marino turned his back on the only life he has ever known to search for a lost friend he has always cared about and never forgotten. Groomed to take his place as an Elder, his father's ambitions, not his own, Julian set out to reinvent himself. Learning to fight, to hunt, to track has been very successful for him, but not in his many year quests to find his best friend. Feeling defeated, Julian goes to the one and only home he still has left and discovers new problems within his race as well as a new war brewing.Serina Ferrari was born a bloodmate. She is destined to be mated with a vampire and will suffer greatly if not. Her system isn't designed for a human life. Her body functions only for a vampire, and without enough nutrition as well as feedings from a vampire, she will die. Her father refuses to accept this fate. He thinks he can cure her and is blind to the suffering she goes through. He takes vampires and even Elders with the hope of finding the cure needed for his daughter. Has no care with how many lives he takes either or how they die. He only wants to save his daughter and kill as many vampires as he can. But when he ends up taking Julian all bets are off and the war that had been brewing starts, not to mention there's a Guardian tagging along right behind Julian--a legendary protector to the vampire race, and very deadly when crossed.Now the battle is on, but who comes out a victor, or a victim?

In a post-apocalyptic future, humans and anthropomorphs live at war with one another in the first novelization by Stardom Tech Industries. When fugitive Shadow the Hedgehog returns to Mobius after 50 years in hiding, a hunt for the hedgehog quickly escalates into a war for the future of the world. Along the way, young hedgehogs Sonny Hedgehog and Amy Rose are sucked into the conflict with their friends. Featuring an all-star cast including series regulars Miles “Tails” Prower and Knuckles the Echidna, returning characters Sally Acorn and the Freedom Fighters and brand-new characters alike, SONIC REVOLUTION is a can’t miss modern reimagining a beloved video game franchise.

[BookStrand Paranormal Romance] He is a century old legend who haunts the present day... When Julian Winston, aka Shadow Hunter, is denied payment from a contract murder, he seeks restitution with the head of his client. In turn, he is offered a priceless commodity—Clara Singer, his client's wife. Never could he have imagined the abduction of Clara to ignite a dormant flame only she fueled to life. A week of captivity brings Clara to the precipice of comfort and deception. She finds a disturbing calm in Julian as she faces the truth behind her abduction. Once released, she quickly returns to Julian. She has become a new target for murder. Together, Clara and Julian are on the run, keeping a hairbreadth step ahead of a cold, merciless killer. They find shelter in the undisputable attraction between each other, even as the threat of death hovers around. Can they endure the pursuit for a chance at love? Or will death claim them both?** A BookStrand Mainstream Romance

Julian Hawthorne (1846-1934), Nathaniel Hawthorne's only son, lived a long and influential life marked by bad circumstances and worse choices. Raised among luminaries such as Thoreau, Emerson, and the Beecher family, Julian became a promising novelist in his twenties, but his writing soon devolved into mediocrity. What talent the young Hawthorne had was spent chasing across the changing literary and publishing landscapes of the period in search of a paycheck, writing everything from potboilers to ad copy. Julian was consistently short of funds because--as biographer Gary Scharnhorst is the first to reveal--he was supporting two households: his wife in one and a longtime mistress in the other. The younger Hawthorne's name and work ethic gave him influence in spite of his haphazard writing. Julian helped to found Cosmopolitan and Collier's Weekly. As a Hearst stringer, he covered some of the era's most important events: McKinley's assassination, the Galveston hurricane, and the Spanish-American War, among others. When Julian died at age 87, he had written millions of words and more than 3,000 pieces, out-publishing his father by a ratio of twenty to one. Gary Scharnhorst, after his own long career including works on Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, and other famous writers, became fascinated by the leaps and falls of Julian Hawthorne. This biography shows why.