Humorous Adventure

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.

Take one bored princess. Make her the seventh daughter in a very proper royal family. Have her run away. Add one powerful, fascinating, dangerous dragon. Princess Cimerone has never met anyone (or anything) like the dragon Kazul. But then, she's never met a witch, a jinn, a death-dealing talking bird or a stone prince either. Princess Cimerone ran away to find some excitement. She's found plenty.

Packed full of adventure, this collection features eight of the best-loved stories from the creators of The Gruffalo, read by Julia Donaldson – perfect for listening to at home, in the car, at bedtime or any time at all! Join in the adventure as Mouse wanders through the deep dark wood to meet the Gruffalo, travel the world with the snail and the whale, join the witch as she zooms through the sky on her broom, and much more! Julia Donaldson Reads The Gruffalo and Other Stories features eight treasured tales, from the bestselling picture-book partnership of Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler.

A robin with poor eyesight has mistaken Freddy the pig's tail for a worm. Putting aside the poem he is writing, Freddy decides to help the poor bird solve his problem. But the solution just seems to lead to bigger problems.

Now that Septimus, Jenna, and Beetle are 14 years old, they have assumed larger roles in their Magykal world. Beetle is the Chief Hermetic Scribe of the Manuscriptorium and Jenna will soon be Queen, but Septimus is still battling the remnants of the Darke Domaine, which will remain until the power of the evil Two-Faced Ring is destroyed forever. To accomplish that, the ancient Alchemie Fyre must be relit - a task that sends Septimus to the very origins of Magyk and Physik.

Speed and self-confidence, that’s Astrid’s motto. Nicknamed “the little thunderbolt,” she loves to spend her days racing down the hillside on her sled, singing loudly as she goes, and visiting Gunnvald, her grumpy, septuagenarian best friend and godfather, who makes hot chocolate from real chocolate bars. She just wishes there were other children to share her hair-raising adventures with. But Astrid’s world is about to be turned upside down by two startling arrivals to the village of Glimmerdal: first a new family, then a mysterious, towering woman who everyone seems to know.

Skeeve is a magician’s apprentice (and a wanna-be thief) until an assassin’s bolt kills his master, Garkin. Along with Aahz, the green-scaled, purple-tongued demon and master magician summoned by Garkin, he sets out on a quest to get even. The road to vengeance is bound to prove rocky, however, because Skeeve can barely light a candle with his beginning magic, and Aahz has lost his own considerable magical abilities as a consequence of Garkin’s summoning spell.

Trenton, New Jersey, bounty hunter Stephanie Plum has inherited a "lucky" bottle from her Uncle Pip. Problem is, Uncle Pip didn't specify if the bottle brought good luck or bad luck.

Two rival factions, the Thieves Guild and Smugglers Guild, wage a war for supremacy over the streets and sewers of the kingdom's capital. Refusing to allow lawlessness and economic collapse to threaten her quality of life, Juliette Contzen, 3rd Princess and begrudging adventurer, boldly ventures forth to rescue her kingdom from the clutches of organized crime.

The Library of the Unwritten in Hell was saved from total devastation, but hundreds of potential books were destroyed. Former librarian Claire and Brevity the muse feel the loss of those stories and are trying to adjust to their new roles within the Arcane Wing and Library, respectively. But when the remains of those books begin to leak a strange ink, Claire realizes that the Library has kept secrets from Hell - and from its own librarians.

Stone McGracen died trying to be a hero, earning him a second chance in a game-like world. Reincarnated, Stone wakes deep in a dungeon armed with a knife, unlimited respawns, and a lot of dungeon monsters between him and freedom. If Stone wants to make it out to the world above, things are going to get... unorthodox. Follow Stone as he claws his way to the top with pure grit, spit, and blood in Sol Anchor Book 1!

The last kids may have escaped the forbidden fortress by the skin of their teeth, but there isn't much to celebrate. Thrull has what he needs to complete the Tower, Rezzoch will most certainly come to Earth, and the world as they know it will cease to exist. Except Jack's Cosmic Hand is now even more powerful than he realized, and it might just be able to stop the inevitable from happening. To get the answers he seeks, he'll need to travel farther than he's ever been. He must go...to the monster dimension!

It's just another boring late night in Albuquerque, New Mexico, for Seeth, a disillusioned punk rocker with too much time on his hands and too little money. That is, until he heads to a bowling alley and runs into Kerwin, a geeky graduate student who's there doing research for a sociology assignment. While trying to distract Kerwin from his scholarly pursuits, Seeth notices two burly cops trying to unlawfully arrest a lone bowler, and for laughs, he jumps in to save him.

The Questing Stones have come to Nowherested, and Evelia Greene is finally ready to receive her life's quest. Perhaps she'll be a great warrior, or a wealthy merchant, or a brilliant mage. Perhaps her quest is simply to live a quiet life, constantly honing a craft to the heights of perfection. Or perhaps the Questing Stones will grant her the legendary mission of popping over to the next village to pick up a loaf of bread.

After helping Princess Grace foil the villainous Prince Ruprecht—twice!—junior knights Tim, Belinda, and Ferkle are on a new quest—this time to recover the Queen of Merryland’s precious golden fleece (and more importantly, the protective amulet in its pocket) from the Kingdom of Dinkum. The safety of all Merryland depends upon them. But first, they must face the deadly Sea of Terror and the dastardly perils it contains. Tim and his friends will have to use every ounce of bravery, valor, and intelligence they possess to navigate the treacherous waters—or else risk becoming flotsam on the waves.

Tim is just a peasant, but he dreams big. He wants more out of life than to grow up to be a woodsman like his father. Unfortunately, the only route to success in the kingdom of Wyld is to be born a prince. Still, Tim is determined. He is brave and clever and always tries to do the right thing—even though he rarely gets the credit for it.

The kids and their monster buddies are hanging out in the tree house, when Jack launches into an epic, totally-heroic, super-rad story of one of his many post-apocalyptic adventures. Of course, after he's finished, everyone's eager to one-up his tale with a story of their own. Soon, Quint, Dirk, June, and Skaelka, and even Globlet regale the group with sometimes outrageous, often hilarious details of their action-packed escapades during the monster-zombie apocalypse.

It takes only one halfling bomb, and Offi Numminen’s world is turned upside-down - or downside-up, really, since he lives in a hole in the ground. His goth cardigans and aggressive melancholy set him apart from the other gnomes, as does his decision to fight back against their halfling oppressors. Suddenly Offi is the leader of a band of lovable misfits and outcasts - from a gryphon who would literally kill for omelets to a young dwarf herbalist who is better with bees than with his cudgel to an assertive and cheerful teen witch with a beard as long as her book of curses.

To escape from a life of petticoats and politeness, Hilary answers a curious advertisement for a pirate crew and suddenly finds herself swept up in a seafaring adventure that may or may not involve a map without an X, a magical treasure that likely doesn't exist, a rogue governess who insists on propriety, a crew of misfit scallywags, and the most treacherous - and unexpected - villain on the High Seas. Will Hilary find the treasure in time? Will she become a true pirate after all? And what will become of the gargoyle?

Civilization has fallen. The solar system is blanketed with the automated weapons of ancient wars, engineered plagues, hazardous waste, rogue AI, monsters from outside our dimension, artificial disasters, and nuclear climate change. Every moment of life on Earth is a brutal fight for survival. The people of Sol carry on, but hope is at a premium. They need something more. Someone with a plan, a savior, a hero. What they get is Lily.