Karen cant't wait for Christmas. She and Andrew are writing to Santa, baking cookies, and decorating their tree. Karen is even learning about other holidays, like Hanukkah. Then Karen's grandmother gets sick and has to go to the hospital, and now Karen doesn't want Christmas to come at all.

WHEN TRUTH AND JUSTICE ARE NO LONGER BLACK AND WHITE ISSUES . . . Sephy is a Cross, one of the privileged in a society where the ruling Crosses treat the pale-skinned noughts as inferiors. But her baby daughter has a nought father . . . Jude is a Nought. Eaten up with bitterness, he blames Sephy for the terrible losses his family has suffered . . . Now Jude's life rests on a knife edge. Will Sephy be forced, once again, to take sides? A razor-sharp and intensely moving novel, the second in the "Noughts & Crosses" sequence.

Have you ever wondered just what was going on when that odd little man with the long name stepped up and volunteered to spin straw into gold for the miller’s daughter? If you stop and think about it, there are some very peculiar and rather hard-to-explain components to the story. Vivian Vande Velde has wondered too, and she’s come up with these six alternative versions of the old legend. A bevy of miller’s daughters confront their perilous situation in very different ways — sometimes comic, sometimes scary. Most of the time, it’s the daughter who gets off safely, but sometimes, amazingly, Rumpelstiltskin himself wins the day. And in one tale, it is the king who cleverly escapes a quite unexpected fate.

In Morrison's debut young adult novel, TAKEN BY STORM, Michael faces incredible loss, but he finds Leesie. UNBROKEN CONNECTION is Leesie's story. By the final page, she is broken and battered--physically and spiritually. Morrison vowed to her readers not to leave her that way. CAYMAN SUMMER recounts Michael and Leesie's final journey. Michael takes Leesie to the Cayman Islands to heal. Time, sunshine, and Michael's devotion free her of physical pain, but grief and guilt haunt her. Michael will do anything to find the old Leesie who prayed, spoke of visions, and kept the rules. For Leesie, that girl is lost forever. Rules? What's the point now? She's ready to break every one. Morrison wrote CAYMAN SUMMER with fan critique and input at http://caymansummer.blogspot.com.

How do you know he's The One? Are you getting butterflies just thinking about him? Have you dreamt of marrying him? Do you just know? When Lucy meets Nate in Venice, she knows instantly he's The One. And, caught up in the whirlwind of first love, they kiss under the Bridge of Sighs at sunset. Which - according to legend - will tie them together forever. But ten years later, they've completely lost contact. That is, until Lucy moves to New York and the legend brings them back together. Again. And again. And again. But what if Nate isn't The One? How is she going to get rid of him? Because forever could be a very long time... A funny, magical romantic comedy about how finding The One doesn't always have to mean happily ever after.

"The rope hung from top to bottom of his dream. The rope hung softly, saying nothing, doing nothing. Then the rope began to swing very softly, very gently...towards him." The need to face your fears; the comedy of family life; the pressure of others' expectations...Intense experiences of childhood are vividly brought to life in these eight atmospheric tales. A gripping collection of short stories from award-winning author Philippa Pearce.

River Heights is covered with snow, and school has been canceled. Nancy, George, Bess, and their friends spend the entire day sledding -- until Molly Angelo's brand-new super-fast sled disappears!

The Aldens begin their adventure by making a home in a boxcar. Their goal is to stay together, and in the process they find a grandfather.

There is an alternate cover edition for this ASIN here. My name is Evalee, and I have a secret. I’m a witch. At least I thought I was. Now, I’m not so sure what’s going, who I am, or who I can trust. Volume 2 in the Mystic Willow Bay Witches Series Approx. 20,000 words

It’s 50 years before the settlement of the city of Ember, and the world is in crisis. War looms on the horizon as 11-year-old Nickie and her aunt travel to the small town of Yonwood, North Carolina. There, one of the town’s respected citizens has had a terrible vision of fire and destruction. Her garbled words are taken as prophetic instruction on how to avoid the coming disaster. If only they can be interpreted correctly. . . . As the people of Yonwood scramble to make sense of the woman’s mysterious utterances, Nickie explores the oddities she finds around town—her great-grandfather’s peculiar journals and papers, a reclusive neighbor who studies the heavens, a strange boy who is fascinated with snakes—all while keeping an eye out for ways to help the world. Is this vision her chance? Or is it already too late to avoid a devastating war? In this prequel to the acclaimed The City of Ember and The People of Sparks, Jeanne DuPrau investigates how, in a world that seems out of control, hope and comfort can be found in the strangest of places. From the Hardcover edition.

All the world's a stage--and nowhere is that more true than at an all-girls high school, particularly one where a scandal has just erupted. A teacher has had an affair with his underage student, and though her friends pretend to be dismayed, they are secretly curious and jealous. They obsessively examine the details of the affair under the watchful eye of their stern and enigmatic saxophone teacher, whose focus may not be as strictly on their upcoming recital as she implies. When the local drama school turns the story of the scandal into their year-end show, the real world and the world of the theater are forced to meet. With both performances--the musicians' and the acting students'--approaching, the boundaries between dramas real and staged, private and public, begin to dissolve. THE REHEARSAL is a tender portrait of teenage yearning and adult regret, an exhilarating, darkly funny, provocative novel about the complications of human desire.

When the world ended, there was the Eighty. Eighty people given the chance for survival. Given the chance to board a revamped space shuttle programmed to find them a new place to live. Somewhere to start over after an asteroid had destroyed the entire human race. Now, after a five-hundred-year "nap," the Eighty have landed---but not everyone survived the trip. And some of those who did aren't quite right. Actually, there are a lot of things that aren't quite right---especially about the place the Eighty land. Half the terrain looks as if it's been made of bright, crazy brush-strokes, the other is like a haunting black-and-white photograph. Jobs, 2Face, Mo'Steel, and the others don't know if they're on another planet. If they're dreaming. Or if they are alive at all. But if they are alive, can they survive on this strange, new world...?

Any girl who goes into the Forbidden Forest never comes out again. Except the one who did. Larkin should have been watching her little sister, should have paid more attention to the trees looming over her family’s fields. Now Sela is gone. Knowing full well the danger of the forest and its beast, Larkin goes after her anyway. With her sister clutched in her arms, she manages to escape, but not before discovering the truth lurking beneath the wicked boughs. She may have evaded the beast once, but with the full force of his magic now fixated on her, she isn’t sure how much longer she can resist.

Delphi Keep is awash in activity, and for Ian, Theo, and Carl, their safe haven might be nearing its end. The Royal Navy has taken the keep to use as a hospital and the tunnels running under the keep and the castle are ideal to set up a central communications outpost for the approaching war. The earl is happy to help the effort, but now the keep is no longer safe for the orphans and they must be evacuated to his winter residence. Ian, Theo, and Carl know that if they're sent away, they'll no longer be protected. But more important than their safety is deciphering the third prophecy. All clues point to a quest. The orphans don't know where they must go, but they know they must rescue the Secret Keeper. To do that, however, they need to work out who this Secret Keeper is. And what, exactly are the secrets he's keeping? From the Hardcover edition.

The members of the Baby-sitters Club have been in eighth grade for over fifteen years now. It's time for them to graduate into high school -- with all the reflection, expectation, sorrow, and joy that such a big life change brings. This is the stunning, heartfelt conclusion to America's best-loved series.