Lenny Brewster is a quirky, intelligent nine-year-old boy. He loves exploring the world around him, but usually does so in slightly unusual ways. Lenny is super smart, but doesn’t really know how to get along with others and is constantly interrupting class with his observations. His teacher, his principal and even his mom don’t know quite what to do with him. So Lenny spends most of his time alone – or in the principal’s office – until he meets Van on the playground and shows him how to make the perfect slide. He and Van have a lot in common and enjoy spending time together, but Van cannot do everything that Lenny can do because he has leukemia, a type [...]
Teddy Fitzroy has a murder on his hands – and no one is taking him seriously! Someone murdered Henry the Hippo, beloved mascot of FunJungle, America’s newest, most popular animal theme park, but all of the adults seem to want to cover up the facts rather than discover the truth! Sure Henry was hated by all who knew and worked with him, but that doesn’t mean that he deserved to die. Teddy is convinced that, if he follows up on the clues he discovered by eavesdropping at the autopsy, he will be able to discover who the criminal is. Was it Large Marge, a rather dim-witted security guard who seems to have it out for Teddy? Or was it the [...]
Hank just started 4th grade and he has already been called to the Principal’s office. Then his teacher assigns them a 5-paragraph essay about their summer vacation. And spelling and grammar counts! Hank despairs of being able to write just a few sentences let alone several paragraphs! Then Hank hits upon the perfect solution: he will bring Niagara Falls into the classroom and everyone will be so impressed, they will forget all about the missing essay!
Something is rotten in Apple Country and Hildy Biddle is the reporter who is going to uncover the truth! So Hildy is really just a writer for the high school newspaper, The Core – that doesn’t mean that she isn’t going to stand up for what is right! Hildy is eager to prove that she is a real, hard-nosed journalist and this is just the big story that she needs. The only drawback is that the big story is about a ghost in a haunted house. How is Hildy supposed to interview people about something that isn’t even real?! As Hildy struggles to uncover the truth from the fictional, she has to battle against the local newspaper’s (The Bee) sensationalist [...]
Susannah “Suze” Simon just traveled all the way across the country from New York to California to live with her mom, her new stepfather and her three new stepbrothers. Yippee. She hasn’t even gotten the chance to unpack when she sees a ghost sitting in her bedroom. It is true that the ghost is really hot, but, hello, she cannot share her bedroom with a guy! She tells Jesse, the ghost, to take a hike, but, of course, he doesn’t so Suze has to find another way to get rid of him. After Suze’s first day at school, however, Jesse is the least of her worries. Heather, a very angry ghost girl who just committed suicide when her boyfriend broke up with her, is determined [...]
Beth Lisick doesn’t really believe in New Year’s resolutions, but, in 2006, she decides that her life could use a few changes. She and her husband are living from week to week on whatever money they are able to bring in from their respective work endeavors; their son, Gus, is wonderful, but a bit unmanageable; they have a garage full of junk so it is easier to buy new than to look for the old; she and her husband have opposite schedules and never seem to see each other anymore; and she has exercised since she was on the track team in high school! It is high time for some changes so Beth decides that she is going to try and improve her [...]
Jessica “Jess” Mastriani had finally convinced the FBI, the press, the military and everyone else in the vicinity of southern Indiana that she had lost her psychic powers and could no longer find missing people. Well, sort of. See, Jess knew that she was being followed by the FBI and that they were just waiting for her to accidentally show that she still did have her powers, but Jess had a system. When Jess had the chance to become a camp counselor at Camp Wawasee for the summer with her best friend, Ruth, she jumped at the chance to get the feds away from her house and to escape having to work in one of her family’s restaurants for the whole summer. After all, how [...]
It was all Ruth’s fault. If Ruth hadn’t started crying when Jeff Day told her that they would have to bury her in a piano case, then Jessica “Jess” Mastriani would never have punched Jeff in the mouth. Then she wouldn’t have been sent to Mr. Goodhart’s office, where she had to endure another lecture on temper management, and she wouldn’t have been assigned another week of detention. Still, detention wasn’t that bad that day because she got to sit next to Rob Wilkins, a hottie who always ended up in the back row (alphabetical order) and she never would have known that he had a totally cherried out Indian motorcycle that she was just dying to ride. It was a sign of her affection [...]
They are completely bald and always wear wigs, constantly sneaking hands underneath to scratch their itchy scalps. They don’t have any toes and have really broad feet, but they force their feet into narrow, fashionable shoes to blend in. They have really long, curved fingernails that they usually hide by wearing gloves. They are the witches. And the meanest, nastiest witches live in England, where a boy has just gone to live with his grandmother after his parent’s tragic death.
His grandmother always warned the boy about suspecting nice women who offer him candy – check for gloves, wigs and pinched feet. He is able to avoid the witches until his grandmother becomes ill and they go to a seaside resort where the English witches are [...]
Sam is now a junior in high school and is still dating David, the president’s son. Her popular older sister, Lucy, still drives her crazy and no one seems to understand that she did not dye her hair black to look more like Ashlee Simpson. Her parents fully don’t understand her and made her get a part time job at a video store to buy her own art supplies to teach her “responsibility.” Her life is pretty much the same as it was in the last book: pictures pop up in US Weekly in their “Worst Dressed” section; popularity hound Kris keeps trying to pretend to be her friend to pad her college applications with press clippings about her new club promoting sexual abstinence; reporters [...]
Twelve-year-old Celeste Harris was comfortable with her weight. She stuck with sweats and other baggy clothes and enjoyed all of the wonderful food around her. Junior high wasn’t kind to girls in her situation, but she had her best-friend-since-third-grade Sandra by her side and life was going okay. Then her cousin got engaged and asked her to be a bridesmaid. Celeste’s life would never be the same. While trying on the peach monstrosity, otherwise known as her bridesmaid dress, Celeste realized that her shape was, well, round. Her other cousin looked like a living Barbie doll in her gown, but there was no amount of tucking and pinning and tailoring that was going to make Celeste look her best. To make matters even worse, Celeste’s [...]
