Fairy Folk

England is a maritime nation. Our folklore and history is peppered with tall tales of the high seas: mysteries of the great ocean, the unknown world beneath the surface of the salt sea, and the liminal coast where the sea-gods meet our lives on the land. Here is a collection of traditional folk tales from the coasts and seas of England. Lisa Schneidau retells the old stories with a contemporary twist: dragons and monsters, sailor heroes and ghost ships, mermaids and shapeshifters.

Young witch Swampelina has lost her wand in a mucky bog. Luckily, a voice calls out saying it’ll retrieve the magical item if the girl promises to be its friend. Unluckily, the creature is a pretty pink butterfly! Swampelina likes all things spooky and gross, so she wants nothing to do with the beautiful bug. Will the witch use every spell she knows to avoid the butterfly, or will she learn that looks can be deceiving?

Frankie Flip Phone knows he’s about to be recycled by his owner, so he runs away to the town of Bremen to start a band instead! Soon, he’s joined by other tossed-out devices eager to become famous musicians. But their dreams are put on pause when they visit a repair shop and discover hackers trying to shut down the internet!

Three brave members of Pig Force have been charged with a top-secret mission: Deliver blueprints for a high-tech home base that could be key in the fight against their vicious foe, Wolf Force! But an enemy pilot is in hot pursuit and armed with a new, dangerous weapon called the Wind Turbine Blaster.

Fourteen-year-old Renata Santiago is the most powerful godborn of them all, a bruja with a unique combination of DNA. The Mexica blood from her dad's side gives her the ability to manipulate shadows. Her mom Pacific, a Maya goddess, gifted her a magical rope that controls time, and Ren recently used it to save a few gods from getting stuck forever in 1987. She brought them back to the present, but her BFF Ah Puch, the once fearsome god of death, darkness, and destruction, is now a teenager with no divine powers.

Cole Randolph ventures to a new kingdom as he continues his search for his friends - and pursues his quest to mend what has gone awry with the magic in The Outskirts. Can he overcome the challenges ahead, or will he be stranded forever in a world between reality and imagination?

My brother Jonah's dream has come true. We have finally landed in his favorite fairy tale: Jack and the Beanstalk! It's a lot of fun meeting Jack. But then we accidentally mess up his story, which means Jack can't climb up the magic beanstalk to find the giant's riches. It's time to take matters into our own hands.

Nationally acclaimed storyteller J.J. Reneaux grew up Cajun for true, surrounded by the stories, music, food, and culture of rural communities in southeast Texas and southern Louisiana. A traditional storyteller who collects by word-of-mouth, Reneaux has developed her repertoire over years of collecting on front porches, school playgrounds, and her beloved fishing trips, as well as at nursing homes, airports, and at neighborhood fais-dodos.

Blue Sargent has found things. For the first time in her life, she has friends she can trust, a group to which she can belong. The Raven Boys have taken her in as one of their own. Their problems have become hers, and her problems have become theirs. The trick with found things, though, is how easily they can be lost. Friends can betray. Mothers can disappear. Visions can mislead. Certainties can unravel.

Tania "Thumbelina" Pulgar may be small, but she's fierce in the wrestling ring. When her friend Jorge “The Mouse” Mendoza introduces her to a manager named Mr. Mole, she’s promised a pro career full of fame and fortune. But soon Thumbelina is miserable as she's dragged from match to match and forced into a flashy new persona that just isn’t a good fit. Can the little wrestler break free of Mr. Mole’s hold and live her own life?

A dandelion-obsessed witch mother, a car crash, and the attention of teenage boys lead to fourteen-year-old Dandelion's imprisonment in a remote tower. If Dandelion wants to escape the tower (and the control of her witch mother) she must learn how to stand up for herself.

Cole Randolph never meant to come to The Outskirts, but when his friends were kidnapped on Halloween he had to try and save them. Now he’s trapped in a world that lies between wakefulness and dreaming, reality and imagination, life and death. Cole’s search for his friends has led him to Elloweer, another of the five kingdoms that make up The Outskirts.

Listen and relive exciting tales from Highlights, now on audio! Learn about a boy at a Spanish market who knocks over a stand of avocados down a hill and makes guacamole and about a jungle that is full of terror at the thought that a monster could be lurking in the shadows, along with other stories.

Mal, Evie, Carlos, and Jay may be the children of terrible villains, but they’re fitting in amazingly well on Auradon. Well, at least most of them are. For Mal, the pressure to be royally perfect is too intense, so she returns to her rotten roots on the Isle of the Lost. But Mal soon finds that her archenemy, Uma, the daughter of Ursula, has taken her spot as self-proclaimed Princess of Evil.

She could save the world - or destroy it. Sixteen-year-old Evangeline 'Evie' Greene leads a charmed life, until she begins experiencing horrifying hallucinations. When an apocalyptic event decimates her Louisiana hometown, Evie realizes her hallucinations were actually visions of the future - and they're still happening. Fighting for her life and desperate for answers, she must turn to her wrong-side-of-the-bayou classmate: Jack Deveaux. But she can't do either alone.

Greetings, initiate! Carter Kane, here. Congratulations on reaching Brooklyn House in one piece. This accomplishment signals that you're descended from Ancient Egyptian royalty, and you have magic powers. But what good is power without knowing how to use it? That's where this training manual comes in. Packed with quizzes, stories, and insights about Ancient Egyptian deities, creatures (the friendly and the deadly), the mysterious Duat, and more, this primer will prime those with the blood of the pharaohs to take their first steps down the path of the gods.

Cole is about to face his biggest peril yet. Since arriving in the Outskirts, Cole and his friends have fought monsters, challenged knights, and battled rampaging robots. But none of that has prepared them for Necronum. In this haunting kingdom, it’s hard to tell the living from the dead, and secret pacts carry terrifying risks. Within Necronum lies the echolands, a waystation for the departed where the living seldom venture. Still separated from his power, Cole must cross to the echolands and rely on his instincts to help rescue his friends.

Several years have passed since the apprentice and his master, Will and Halt, first met, and Will is finally a full-fledged Ranger with his own fief to look after. The fief seems sleepy - boring, even - until Lord Syron, master of a castle far in the north, is struck down by a mysterious illness. Joined by his friend Alyss, Will is suddenly thrown headfirst into an extraordinary adventure, investigating fears of sorcery and trying to determine who is loyal to Lord Syron.

Sviska is a man of the shadows, an assassin without any one place to call his own. But in the Far North, he discovers a secret. Magic, long thought lost to the world, is alive. The genocide to destroy every elf, wizard, and sacred being of old is not yet complete. Sviska's masters work the strings of the world and he has been sent for a task he does not even fully understand yet. When at last he feels he has what he has always wanted, darkness falls upon the world.

Fel'annár and The Company travel to the Motherland on a mission to protect their prince, amidst growing strife between the Silvan and Alpine warriors. While his nascent power continues to evolve, the story of his past emerges, and Fel'annár is thrust upon a perilous road of political intrigue and conspiracy. Meanwhile, the Elvenking makes a shocking discovery.