"It's 1951, and twelve-year-old Pete Collison is a regular kid in Brooklyn, New York, who loves Sam Spade detective books and radio crime dramas. But when an FBI agent shows up at Pete's doorstep, accusing Pete's father of being a Communist, Pete is caught in a real-life mystery. Could there really be Commies in Pete's family?"--

Sixteen-year-old John Proud is tormented by the ghost of an evil ancestor, with his own name and his own face, who was hanged in 1854 for being a demon.

Newbery Medalist Avi carves an imaginative story full of suspense and surprises. For the animals of Central Park, life turns upside down when Big Daddy Duds and his gang of rats move uptown and take over the park. The mayor of Central Park, a squirrel named Oscar Westerwit, is determined to give the park back to its rightful owners-the squirrels, rabbits, and moles. Mark Nilson's lively narration brings to life the critters of Central Park in 1900....

A selection of short stories for children.

"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...

Falsely accused of theft and murder, an orphaned peasant boy in fourteenth-century England flees his village and meets a larger-than-life juggler who holds a dangerous secret.

On a stormy night in the Kingdom of Pergamontio, an insistent knocking brings Fabrizio, teh servant boy, tothe door. Outside stands a soldier summoning Fabrizio's master, Mangus the Magician, to the king's castle. Because Mangus has been under house arrest for confessing to being a magician, he cannot imagine why the king si calling for him.

Ragweed, a young country mouse, leaves his family and travels to the big city, where he finds excitement and danger and sees cats for the first time.

When his father is killed fighting for the Union in the War Between the States, thirteen-year-old Tom Carroll must take a job to support his family. He finds work at a bustling ironworks in his hometown of Brooklyn, New York, where dozens of men are frantically pounding together the strangest ship Tom has ever seen.