Young Rupert, with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and experience, has been raised in complete isolation from the world by his enigmatic grandparents. His life takes an extraordinary turn when a violent storm uncovers a long-concealed treasure. In the aftermath of the storm, his grandparents vanish. Completely alone, the bewildered boy seizes upon the opportunity to leave his forest home at last. Out in the wider world, Rupert encounters new friends and learns that the kingdom's beloved royal family has been slain by brutal usurpers, who now rule the land with cunning and cruelty. But astonishing revelations convince Rupert that he has a pivotal role in restoring justice to the land. As Rupert and his comrades face imprisonment, bloody skirmishes, desperate conditions, and alluring yet sinister encounters, the darkest moments may reveal astonishing wonders. Unfolding events take on a deeper meaning as Rupert's mysterious gifts guide him toward shattering revelations and truths about his identity and his destiny.

Inspired by Latinx folklore, legends, and myths from the Iberian Peninsula and Central and South America, this “clever, funny, and entertaining” (Kirkus Reviews) third book in the Charlie Hernández series follows Charlie as he faces off against an army of the dead. After hitchhiking across Central and South America to rescue the Witch Queen and face off against La Mano Peluda, Charlie Hernández is pretty much grounded for life. But after all he’s been through, some quiet time at home with his parents might be nice. Though it would be better if he didn’t have to share his room with his obnoxiously perfect cousin Raúl, who’s staying with them. But quiet is hard to come by when you’re the fifth and final morphling, and it’s not long before death walks back into Charlie’s life. Or at least, the dead do, starting with a mysterious young calaca who corners him at school, dropping cryptic hints about trouble brewing in the 305. With the League of Shadows focused on repairing fractured alliances and tracking gathering armies, this one’s up to Charlie to solve. Following the clues only leads to more questions, and not even teenage investigative journalist extraordinaire Violet Rey can figure out how a sudden rooster infestation, earthquakes, missing persons, and a pet-napping gang of lizard-men—whom Charlie doesn’t recognize from any legend—are all connected. Most concerning of all is when they learn a map has been stolen that reveals the locations of the Golden Dooms, the twelve ancient calaca watchmen who form the magical barrier between the realms. To stop the impending invasion, Charlie and Violet must outwit an ancient evil and unravel the most sinister of schemes. That is, unless they’d rather watch the Land of the Living get overrun by the dead.

Presents the adventures of the Fantastic Four's battles with their enemy Von Doom.

A story featuring the intrepid Iron Man finds him matching wits with the villainous genius Dr. Doom in an adaptation of an episode from the popular animated television series.

Masters of Doom is the amazing true story of the Lennon and McCartney of video games: John Carmack and John Romero. Together, they ruled big business. They transformed popular culture. And they provoked a national controversy. More than anything, they lived a unique and rollicking American Dream, escaping the broken homes of their youth to co-create the most notoriously successful game franchises in history—Doom and Quake—until the games they made tore them apart. Americans spend more money on video games than on movie tickets. Masters of Doom is the first book to chronicle this industry’s greatest story, written by one of the medium’s leading observers. David Kushner takes readers inside the rags-to-riches adventure of two rebellious entrepreneurs who came of age to shape a generation. The vivid portrait reveals why their games are so violent and why their immersion in their brilliantly designed fantasy worlds offered them solace. And it shows how they channeled their fury and imagination into products that are a formative influence on our culture, from MTV to the Internet to Columbine. This is a story of friendship and betrayal, commerce and artistry—a powerful and compassionate account of what it’s like to be young, driven, and wildly creative. “To my taste, the greatest American myth of cosmogenesis features the maladjusted, antisocial, genius teenage boy who, in the insular laboratory of his own bedroom, invents the universe from scratch. Masters of Doom is a particularly inspired rendition. Dave Kushner chronicles the saga of video game virtuosi Carmack and Romero with terrific brio. This is a page-turning, mythopoeic cyber-soap opera about two glamorous geek geniuses—and it should be read while scarfing down pepperoni pizza and swilling Diet Coke, with Queens of the Stone Age cranked up all the way.”—Mark Leyner, author of I Smell Esther Williams

The Pet Force must contend with their archenemy Vetvix's latest secret weapon--a ferocious dog called K-Niner.

It's another ordinary day in Food Town, and Nancy McNutty, peanut butter sandwich and rookie reporter, desperately needs a big break. So when news comes in of a monster doughnut on the rampage, she's on the case. And boy, is that doughnut hungry! It's eating everything in sight, and not even the police, the fire department, or the military can bring it down. Whatever will President Bacon do? They need a plucky hero to save the day for the good of all food kind!

"All disasters are in some sense man-made." Setting the annus horribilis of 2020 in historical perspective, Niall Ferguson explains why we are getting worse, not better, at handling disasters. Disasters are inherently hard to predict. Pandemics, like earthquakes, wildfires, financial crises. and wars, are not normally distributed; there is no cycle of history to help us anticipate the next catastrophe. But when disaster strikes, we ought to be better prepared than the Romans were when Vesuvius erupted, or medieval Italians when the Black Death struck. We have science on our side, after all. Yet in 2020 the responses of many developed countries, including the United States, to a new virus from China were badly bungled. Why? Why did only a few Asian countries learn the right lessons from SARS and MERS? While populist leaders certainly performed poorly in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, Niall Ferguson argues that more profound pathologies were at work--pathologies already visible in our responses to earlier disasters. In books going back nearly twenty years, including Colossus, The Great Degeneration, and The Square and the Tower, Ferguson has studied the foibles of modern America, from imperial hubris to bureaucratic sclerosis and online fragmentation. Drawing from multiple disciplines, including economics, cliodynamics, and network science, Doom offers not just a history but a general theory of disasters, showing why our ever more bureaucratic and complex systems are getting worse at handling them. Doom is the lesson of history that this country--indeed the West as a whole--urgently needs to learn, if we want to handle the next crisis better, and to avoid the ultimate doom of irreversible decline.