Writing in free verse honed to a wicked edge, the incomparable Ron Koertge brings dark and contemporary humor to twenty iconic fairy tales. Once upon a time, there was a strung-out match girl who sold CDs to stoners. Twelve impetuous sisters escaped King Daddy’s clutches to jiggle and cavort and wear out their shoes. A fickle Thumbelina searched for a tiny husband, leaving bodies in her wake. And Little Red Riding Hood confessed that she kind of wanted to know what it’s like to be swallowed whole. From bloodied and blinded stepsisters (they were duped) to a chopped-off finger flying into a heroine’s cleavage, this is fairy tale world turned upside down. Ron Koertge knows what really happened to all those wolves and maidens, ogres and orphans, kings and piglets, and he knows about the Ever After. So come closer — he wants to whisper in your ear.

In a series of short interconnected poems, students at a high school nicknamed Brimstone reveal the violence existing and growing in their lives. Jr Lib Guild. Reprint.

"Does it seem reasonable to you that a Regency continues—into an Emperor's thirtieth year " "No, m'lord," Shoka said. "Not to us, either. Not to many of us. We were ready to make that objection—when lord Gitu overran Yijang and Hua.... Assassinations, elsewhere. Hired killers. Bands of mercenaries traveling under imperial orders. The Emperor'sseal, and the Regent's orders. How do we stop such a thing How do we prevent it—when every lord able to lead is apprehended, assassinated, when they strip us of men, even boys out of the fields—go to Saukendar, some said. Go to Saukendar. They urged me to send to you. This time he has to listen, they said. But if I had sent—and Ghita had known—you understand—" Reidi gave an uncomfortable twitch of the shoulders. His horse shifted again. "I had no true hope that you'd come. You'd indicated to the villagers—that you had no wish to hear from anyone. That you would refuse any such petitions—" "You were watching me." "It's my village, m'lord—as the Regent pointed out to me again and again, and threatened my life should you leave that mountain. Of course the word came to me. I tried to get a messenger down the road to you when I knew you'd left Mon.... We believed you'd come back to deal with Ghita and his partisans." Shoka felt cold, cold all the way to the bones. "There are men ready to follow you, lord Saukendar. There are men who've committed their lives to this— We didn't know the hour. We only believed. Now you've come back ..." "It's gripping drama, tightly focussed and inexorable as Taizu herself. Read The Paladin and you'll never settle for another ordinary sword-wielding female." —Faren Miller LOCUS At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management)

A teenage girl. A survivalist childhood. And now a bomb strapped to her chest. See the world through her eyes in this harrowing and deeply affecting literary thriller. I’m Valkyrie White. I’m fifteen. Your government killed my family. Ever since Mabby died while picking beans in their garden — with the pock-a-pock of a helicopter overhead — four-year-old Valley knows what her job is: hide in the underground den with her brother, Bo, while Da is working, because Those People will kill them like coyotes. But now, with Da unexpectedly gone and no home to return to, a teenage Valley (now Valkyrie) and her big brother must bring their message to the outside world — a not-so-smart place where little boys wear their names on their backpacks and young men don’t pat down strangers before offering a lift. Blythe Woolston infuses her white-knuckle narrative, set in a day-after-tomorrow Montana, with a dark, trenchant humor and a keen psychological eye. Alternating past-present vignettes in prose as tightly wound as the springs of a clock and as masterfully plotted as a game of chess, she ratchets up the pacing right to the final, explosive end.

From the Newbery Honor-winning, New York Times bestselling author of The Inquisitor's Tale. Cover may vary If you dare, join Jack and Jill as they embark on a harrowing quest through a new set of tales from the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, and others. Follow along as they enter startling new landscapes that may (or may not) be scary, bloody, terrifying, and altogether true in this hair-raising companion to Adam Gidwitz’s widely acclaimed, award-winning debut, A Tale Dark & Grimm. An Oprah Kids’ Reading List Pick A Publishers Weekly Best New Book of the Week Pick For more twisted tales look for A Tale Dark & Grimm and The Grimm Conclusion

When Kevin Boland, a fourteen-year-old baseball player, catches mononucleosis, he discovers that keeping a journal and experimenting with poetry not only helps fill the time, it also helps him deal with life, love, and loss. Reprint.

A page-turning novel that is also an exploration of the great philosophical concepts of Western thought, Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World has fired the imagination of readers all over the world, with more than twenty million copies in print. One day fourteen-year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find in her mailbox two notes, with one question on each: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" From that irresistible beginning, Sophie becomes obsessed with questions that take her far beyond what she knows of her Norwegian village. Through those letters, she enrolls in a kind of correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre, with a mysterious philosopher, while receiving letters addressed to another girl. Who is Hilde? And why does her mail keep turning up? To unravel this riddle, Sophie must use the philosophy she is learning—but the truth turns out to be far more complicated than she could have imagined.

"Brutally beautiful — not like anything else you'll read this year, or any other." - Cassandra Clare, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Clockwork Angel Kit and Fancy Cordelle are sisters of the best kind: best friends, best confidantes, and best accomplices. The daughters of the infamous Bonesaw Killer, Kit and Fancy are used to feeling like outsiders, and that’s just the way they like it. But in Portero, where the weird and wild run rampant, the Cordelle sisters are hardly the oddest or most dangerous creatures around. It’s no surprise when Kit and Fancy start to give in to their deepest desire—the desire to kill. What starts as a fascination with slicing open and stitching up quickly spirals into a gratifying murder spree. Of course, the sisters aren’t killing just anyone, only the people who truly deserve it. But the girls have learned from the mistakes of their father, and know that a shred of evidence could get them caught. So when Fancy stumbles upon a mysterious and invisible doorway to another world, she opens a door to endless possibilities….

Avi's treasured Newbery Honor Book now in expanded After Words edition!Thirteen-year-old Charlotte Doyle is excited to return home from her school in England to her family in Rhode Island in the summer of 1832. But when the two families she was supposed to travel with mysteriously cancel their trips, Charlotte finds herself the lone passenger on a long sea voyage with a cruel captain and a mutinous crew. Worse yet, soon after stepping aboard the ship, she becomes enmeshed in a conflict between them! What begins as an eagerly anticipated ocean crossing turns into a harrowing journey, where Charlotte gains a villainous enemy . . . and is put on trial for murder!After Words material includes author Q & A, journal writing tips, and other activities that bring Charlotte's world to life!

Now in paperback--from the author of the acclaimed Whoredom in Kimmage, a moving, controversial, and supremely intelligent memoir of a bright and vulnerable teenager's hellish summer job. In 1978, Rosemary Mahoney, an aspiring young writer of seventeen, wrote her personal idol Lillian Hellman inquiring whether the famed woman of American letters might need domestic help for the summer. When Hellman responded affirmatively, Mahoney imagined an idyll on Martha's Vineyard of mentoring and friendship. But in reality Mahoney's summer unfolded into an exquisite and grueling exercise in humiliation at the hands of the acerbic Hellman and her retinue of celebrated acquaintances. By turns heartbreaking and uproariously funny, A Likely Story portrays the coming-of-age of a brilliant and troubled young woman--a universal tale of illusions shattered and an object lesson in the often misdirected search for heroes.