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.

Matilda, a brilliant, sensitive little girl, uses her talents and ingenuity to seek revenge on her crooked father, lazy mother, and the terrifying Miss Trunchbull, her wicked headmistress, and save her beloved teacher, Miss Honey.

Biographers often neglect the captive years of Mary, Queen of Scots, who trusted Queen Elizabeth's promise of sanctuary when she fled from rebels in Scotland and then found herself imprisoned as the guest of George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, and his indomitable wife, Bess of Hardwick. The newly married couple welcome the doomed queen into their home, certain that serving as her hosts and jailers will bring them an advantage in the cutthroat world...

12 year old twins live a privileged but uneventful life in New York City until both John and Philippa need to have their wisdom teeth extracted. Afterward, the children begin to experience strange growth spurts, have cravings for smoke and heat, and gain the ability

"Widely acknowledged as the first English novel, Daniel Defoe's adventure story of a shipwrecked sailor became an instant classic upon its publication in 1719 and the yardstick for countless castaway narratives to follow." "Robinson Crusoe, an English sailor, finds himself marooned on a desert island after the rest of his shipmates drown in a terrible wreck. He survives on the island for nearly three decades, domesticating livestock, cultivating plants,...

A gay photographer of endangered species recalls a childhood meeting with two agents of Death. They told him they were seeking the extinction of species. Suddenly, he has an intuitive flash. Aids! Is that their work too, the extinction of his kind? He embarks on a quest for an answer.

"On a warm summer night, an attractive woman hurtles north in a blue Peugeot with a hastily scrawled address in her pocket, while, back in London, a desperate man leaves an urgent late-night phone message on his brother's answering machine. By sunrise the next morning, the woman is found inside her car along an otherwise peaceful country lane, shot, execution-style, through the head." "Welcome to the idyllic Yorkshire Dales, where Detective Inspector...

Maverick police inspector Alan Banks finds himself drawn into London's underworld when he aids his archrival Chief Constable Riddle, after the chief's missing daughter turns up on a pornographic website.

Following the Revolution, an eleven-year-old boy becomes the captive of a ruthless man who has set up his own "nation," supported by piracy, on a remote part of the New Jersey coast.

In eighteenth-century England, after his father buys a schooner called the Dragon, sixteen-year-old John sets out to sail it from Kent to London and becomes involved in a dangerous smuggling scheme.