Urban For Children

Natalie Johnson has always dreamed she's someone else - calm, beautiful, in control. A chosen warrior with a maniacal arch nemesis and a dreamy boyfriend, the type that can make your knees melt and your heart quiver. Real life is much different. She's tormented by a bully and endures the sharp tongue of her father, but finds solace in her dreams.

Meet Alex Finch - tomboy, techno geek, monster hunter. Reluctant monster hunter. A school project, an absentminded project partner, and a misplaced backpack all change 16-year-old Alex Finch's life forever. In a single afternoon Alex finds the missing backpack, has a run-in with Sam, the boy she's had a crush on since first grade - and discovers that monsters are real.

As Daniel Byers prepares to attend a basketball camp before his senior year of high school, the terrifying blurs that've plagued him for the last nine months return. Dark images begin to haunt him - creatures crawling from the deepest pits of his nightmares, glimmers of chilling memories from his early childhood.

Messenger is the deleted last chapter from Dearest (Woodcutter Sisters, book three). Spoiler alert. Proceed with caution!

Angel lives with a loving foster family, but dreams of a land that exists only in the pages of a fantasy novel. Until she meets Gregor, whose magic Talent saves her life and revives lost memories. She follows Gregor to her homeland...a world unlike any she has imagined, where she travels a path of self-discovery that leads directly to her role in an ancient Prophecy...and to the madman who set her fate in motion.

Ember must stop the apocalypse from happening, but at what cost? The Angels of destruction have arrived, and only Ember stands in the way of their mission to carry out God's wrath and annihilate his enemies. When the barrier between celestial creatures and humans beings is broken and Angels descend to Earth, Ember soon learns there's a fine line between good and evil. As she faces a world full of monsters and magic, a terrifying darkness rises and threatens to destroy everything she's fighting for.

With a psychic assassin after them, Kara, Olivia, and Raymond must use all their powers and connections to find him before he strikes. No one knows why an assassin was sent to kill them, but the clues lead them to believe it has something to do with the psychic police detective who took Olivia's fang as a trophy. Another problem arises when Kara's injured and low on blood. With Kara's moral stance on not taking the blood of the living, her friends have to find someone's blood before Kara takes a turn for the worse.

When Argyle invites his best friend, Simon Kerrigan, home for the Christmas holidays, he wants to save Simon from staying at Guilder Boarding School on his own. Simon comes along and doesn't expect to find much more excitement in the tiny Scottish town where Argyle's family lives. Until he meets Beth, Argyle's older sister. She's beautiful, brash and clearly interested in him.

Alex has recovered from her deadly battle with the woman who took Sam. Now she is helping run the underground haven, and learning to live with the inhuman residents. When one of the residents is murdered, suspicion falls on Sam. And her greatest fear starts happening again - that she'll lose him. This time for good. As the body count goes up, Alex is determined to find the real killer, no matter what the cost. For her, the cost may end up being her life.

When the entire population of Shade go missing, investigative reporter Mila Watson knows this could be the big break she has been waiting for. Setting off into the mountains to the village of Shade, Mila soon learns that the village isn't as deserted as she first believed it to be and that creatures lurk in the shades...

The Arvy threat worsens each day. They continue to destroy the hives vital fuel resources, leaving us with one option - evacuate to the largest government bunker, located in South Dakota. The injured hive members are moved as first priority, but a disastrous event occurs on the way to our drop-off zone. We find ourselves in a ghost town, surrounded by spiteful, revenge-filled Arvies. Chaos ensues and our death toll rises. Just when we think the end has come, unsuspected help arrives.

Witch Julia Miller has been sent by the Wicce to bring an end to the war that rages between the Beautiful Immortals. Joining a pack of werewolves, Julia must travel with them to a land unknown to her. Here she will learn the horrifying truth about the dark secrets hidden in the town of Maze.

Winter McCall and Thaddeus Blake flee the burning mansion. Both are hunted by two relentless police officers and vampires. With time running out, Thaddeus leads Winnie towards Scotland, where he believes the Moonbeam, a precious stone with the ability to destroy those that hunt him, is hidden. But Thaddeus has held the Moonbeam before and with it came betrayal, madness and murder. Will the Moonbeam protect Thaddeus, last of the werewolves, or is he truly the only surviving member of his race?

When Miri receives a silver cat charm from her omama on the night before she dies, she has no idea that the charm holds a secret, a powerful magic that saved her omama's life and is about to make Miri's a whole lot more interesting.

Shelby Pardow never imagined she could kill someone. All she wants to do is hide from her troubled father... when she is teleported to awaiting soldiers on the planet Azimuth. Here she is not a child, but Kin to one of the six Aulic Assembly members whom Malefic Cacoethes has drugged and imprisoned. He seeks to become dictator of this world (and then Earth by proxy). His father, Biskara, is an evil celestial entity, tracked by the Assembly with an armillary device, The Silver Sphere.

Dunn Kelly hardly ever has a problem covering for his alcoholic father. As the only Special Populations detective on the police force, his dad's responsibilities usually consist of freeing zombies entangled in turnstiles, checking rabies tags on werewolves, and sweeping up vampires who oversleep while moon bathing. But when teen pop star Delilah Idaho sees a wrinkle on her forehead, his world is turned upside-down.

This part-demon teen vampire fighter and her faithful terrier hellhound are once again patrolling the dark city streets of San Antonio, Texas. Val's hunky human partner, Detective Dan Sullivan, is giving her the cold shoulder since she beheaded his vampire ex-fiancée. Vamp leader Alejandro is struggling to keep the peace between vamps, demons, and humans. The mucho powerful Encyclopedia Magicka has been stolen; someone in the Demon Underground is poisoning vamps; and Val's inner lust demon, Lola, is getting very restless.

Coming of Age in the Other America shows that despite overwhelming odds, some disadvantaged urban youth do achieve upward mobility. Drawing from 10 years of fieldwork with parents and children who resided in Baltimore public housing, sociologists Stefanie DeLuca, Susan Clampet-Lundquist, and Kathryn Edin highlight the remarkable resiliency of some of the youth who hailed from the nation's poorest neighborhoods and show how the right public policies might help break the cycle of disadvantage.

Lying is unbearable, betrayal is inevitable, and choosing which path to take is impossible. Olga Gay Worontzoff ended her senior year as an eighteen-year-old girl totally in love with Nate, enjoying their new romance and about to attend the university of her dreams. Now she's spending her summer in the weird subculture of the Underworld, with charmingly witty and powerful angels, and problematic demons, trying to rescue Connor, the best friend and secret crush she was unable to save during a freak accident.

The beginning of the end. The Apocalypse. A nuclear fallout wiped out every living thing on the planet, except for a few thousand of us who took shelter in underground bunkers across the globe. Now, after 13 long years, we were finally able to return to the topside to begin to rebuild. We thought we were alone. We were never more wrong. Before the fallout, scientists had worked on creating an anti-radiation vaccine (ARV).