Scar Island

Holes meets Hatchet in this unforgettable adventure. The acclaimed author of The Honest Truth and Some Kind of Courage brings his signature blend of action, heart, and beautiful writing to a tale of misfits struggling to survive.Jonathan Grisby is the newest addition to the Slabhenge Reformatory School for Troubled Boys. Shipped out to the remote island facility, Jonathan quickly learns that the school is less concerned with true reform and is more a place where parents send away kids who have become too troublesome. It's an isle of misfit boys.But on his first full day at Slabhenge, a freak lightning storm leaves the kids without any adult supervision. Suddenly the inmates are running the asylum -- and unless Jonathan can move beyond his troubled past and assert himself as a leader, every boy on the island is doomed.

The acclaimed author of The Honest Truth delivers his most emotionally powerful novel yet. Brodie was a good dog. And good dogs go to heaven.Except Brodie can't move on. Not just yet. As wonderful as his glimpse of the afterlife is, he can't forget the boy he left behind. The boy he loved, and who loved him in return.The boy who's still in danger.So Brodie breaks the rules of heaven. He returns to Earth as a spirit. With the help of two other lost souls -- lovable pitbull Tuck and surly housecat Patsy -- he is determined to find his boy and to save him. Even if it costs him paradise. Even if he loses his eternal soul.Because it's what a good dog would do.

Saddle up for a life-defining, death-defying adventure. Joseph Johnson has lost just about everyone he's ever loved. He lost his pa in an accident. He lost his ma and his little sister to sickness. And now, he's lost his pony-fast, fierce, beautiful Sarah, taken away by a man who had no right to take her.Joseph can sure enough get her back, though. The odds are stacked against him, but he isn't about to give up. He will face down deadly animals, dangerous men, and the fury of nature itself on his quest to be reunited with the only family he has left.Because Joseph Johnson may have lost just about everything. But he hasn't lost hope. And he hasn't lost the fire in his belly that says he's getting his Sarah back-no matter what.The critically acclaimed author of The Honest Truth returns with a poignant, hopeful, and action-packed story about hearts that won't be tamed... and spirits that refuse to be broken.

Mark has been in and out of hospital his whole life - and he's fed up. So when his cancer returns, he decides he's had enough. Running away with his dog Beau, he sets out to climb a mountain - and it's only when he's left everything behind that Mark realises he has everything to live for.

A plane crashes on a desert island and the only survivors, a group of schoolboys, assemble on the beach and wait to be rescued. By day they inhabit a land of bright fantastic birds and dark blue seas, but at night their dreams are haunted by the image of a terrifying beast. As the boys' delicate sense of order fades, so their childish dreams are transformed into something more primitive, and their behaviour starts to take on a murderous, savage significance. First published in 1954, Lord of the Flies is one of the most celebrated and widely read of modern classics. Now fully revised and updated, this educational edition includes chapter summaries, comprehension questions, discussion points, classroom activities, a biographical profile of Golding, historical context relevant to the novel and an essay on Lord of the Flies by William Golding entitled 'Fable'. Aimed at Key Stage 3 and 4 students, it also includes a section on literary theory for advanced or A-level students. The educational edition encourages original and independent thinking while guiding the student through the text - ideal for use in the classroom and at home.

A mythmaker of the highest order, China Miéville has emblazoned the fantasy novel with fresh language, startling images, and stunning originality. Set in the same sprawling world of Miéville’s Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning novel, Perdido Street Station, this latest epic introduces a whole new cast of intriguing characters and dazzling creations. Aboard a vast seafaring vessel, a band of prisoners and slaves, their bodies remade into grotesque biological oddities, is being transported to the fledgling colony of New Crobuzon. But the journey is not theirs alone. They are joined by a handful of travelers, each with a reason for fleeing the city. Among them is Bellis Coldwine, a renowned linguist whose services as an interpreter grant her passage—and escape from horrific punishment. For she is linked to Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin, the brilliant renegade scientist who has unwittingly unleashed a nightmare upon New Crobuzon. For Bellis, the plan is clear: live among the new frontiersmen of the colony until it is safe to return home. But when the ship is besieged by pirates on the Swollen Ocean, the senior officers are summarily executed. The surviving passengers are brought to Armada, a city constructed from the hulls of pirated ships, a floating, landless mass ruled by the bizarre duality called the Lovers. On Armada, everyone is given work, and even Remades live as equals to humans, Cactae, and Cray. Yet no one may ever leave. Lonely and embittered in her captivity, Bellis knows that to show dissent is a death sentence. Instead, she must furtively seek information about Armada’s agenda. The answer lies in the dark, amorphous shapes that float undetected miles below the waters—terrifying entities with a singular, chilling mission. . . . China Miéville is a writer for a new era—and The Scar is a luminous, brilliantly imagined novel that is nothing short of spectacular. BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from China Miéville’s Embassytown.

What begins as a training run with sled dogs turns into a race against time for Tatum and her new friend, a Siberian Yupik boy named Cole. When a freak blizzard hits this remote island off the coast of Alaska, the duo seeks shelter overnight in a dilapidated hunting cabin. Their harrowing ordeal goes from bad to worse when wind-driven snow forces them to risk an alternate route. Stranded in the untamed wilderness, they must rely on each other—as well as their faithful huskies—to survive sub-zero temperatures and bone-numbing exhaustion. Worse still, their food supply is dangerously low. The most daunting decision comes when the strongest dog runs away. One person must go for help, while one must stay behind. Either way, they'll both be alone in the wild for an uncertain amount of time.

Rat Island rises from the icy gray waters of the Bering Sea, a mass of volcanic rock covered with tundra, midway between Alaska and Siberia. Once a remote sanctuary for enormous flocks of seabirds, the island gained a new name when shipwrecked rats colonized, savaging the nesting birds by the thousands. Now, on this and hundreds of other remote islands around the world, a massive-and massively controversial-wildlife rescue mission is under way. Islands, making up just 3 percent of Earth's landmass, harbor more than half of its endangered species. These fragile ecosystems, home to unique species that evolved in peaceful isolation, have been catastrophically disrupted by mainland predators-rats, cats, goats, and pigs ferried by humans to islands around the globe. To save these endangered islanders, academic ecologists have teamed up with professional hunters and semiretired poachers in a radical act of conservation now bent on annihilating the invaders. Sharpshooters are sniping at goat herds from helicopters. Biological SWAT teams are blanketing mountainous isles with rat poison. Rat Island reveals a little-known and much-debated side of today's conservation movement, founded on a cruel-to-be-kind philosophy. Touring exotic locales with a ragtag group of environmental fighters, William Stolzenburg delivers both perilous adventure and intimate portraits of human, beast, hero, and villain. And amid manifold threats to life on Earth, he reveals a new reason to hope.