Jerry Renault ponders the question on the poster in his locker: Do I dare disturb the universe? Refusing to sell chocolates in the annual Trinity school fund-raiser may not seem like a radical thing to do. But when Jerry challenges a secret school society called The Vigils, his defiant act turns into an all-out war. Now the only question is: Who will survive?

First published in 1974, Robert Cormier's groundbreaking novel, an unflinching portrait of corruption and cruelty, has become a modern classic.

As long ago as forever and as far away as Selidor, there lived the dragonlord and Archmage, Sparrowhawk, the greatest of the great wizards - he who, when still a youth, met with the evil shadow-beast; he who later brought back the Ring of Erreth-Akbe from the Tombs of Atuan; and he who, as an old man, rode the mighty dragon Kalessin back from the land of the dead. And then, the legends say, Sparrowhawk entered his boat, Lookfar, turned his back on land, and without wind or sail or oar moved westward over the sea and out of sight.

Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, The Farthest Shore - Ursula Le Guin's brilliant and magical trilogy.

Set on the desert planet Arrakis, Dune is the story of the boy Paul Atreides, heir to a noble family tasked with ruling an inhospitable world where the only thing of value is the spice melange, a drug capable of extending life and enhancing consciousness. Coveted across the known universe, melange is a prize worth killing for...

When House Atreides is betrayed, the destruction of Paul's family will set the boy on a journey toward a destiny greater than he could ever have imagined. And as he evolves into the mysterious man known as Muad'Dib, he will bring to fruition humankind's most ancient and unattainable dream.

A stunning blend of adventure and mysticism, environmentalism and politics, Dune formed the basis of what is undoubtedly the grandest epic in science fiction.

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden is the story of a sixteen-year-old who retreats from reality into the bondage of a lushly imagined but threatening kingdom, and her slow and painful journey back to sanity.

Chronicles the three-year battle of a mentally ill, but perceptive, teenage girl against a world of her own creation, emphasizing her relationship with the doctor who gave her the ammunition of self-understanding with which to help herself.

Joanne Greenberg wrote this novel, which is a fictionalized autobiography, to give a picture of what being schizophrenic feels like and what can be accomplished with a trusting relationship between a gifted therapist and a willing patient. It is not a case history or study. She likes to think it is a hymn to reality.

The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge is Rilke’s major prose work and was one of the earliest publications to introduce him to American readers. The very wide audience which Rilke’s work commands today will welcome the reissue in paperback of this extremely perceptive translation of the Notebooks by M. D. Herter Norton.

A masterly translation of one of the first great modernist novels by one of the German language's greatest poets, in which a young man named Malte Laurids Brigge lives in a cheap room in Paris while his belongings rot in storage. Every person he sees seems to carry their death within them and with little but a library card to distinguish him from the city's untouchables, he thinks of the deaths, and ghosts, of his aristocratic family, of which he is the sole living descendant. Suffused with passages of lyrical brilliance, Rilke's semi-autobiographical novel is a moving and powerful coming-of-age story.

To Kill a Mockingbird is a timeless classic that delves into the heart of a sleepy Southern town, exposing the moral dilemmas that shake its foundation. First published in 1960 and awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1961, Harper Lee's novel captures the essence of innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, humor and pathos.

This compelling narrative is told through the eyes of a young girl named Scout, whose father, Atticus Finch, is a lawyer tasked with defending a black man unjustly accused of a terrible crime. Set against the backdrop of the mid-1930s Depression in Alabama, the story is a profound commentary on the virulent prejudice that plagues the town. Atticus's quiet heroism and the events that unfold challenge the conscience of a community steeped in hypocrisy and violence.

Lee herself described the book as a simple love story, yet it resonates with readers as much more—a reflection on human behavior and societal norms.

The summer of '28 was a vintage season for a growing boy. A summer of green apple trees, mowed lawns, and new sneakers. Of half-burnt firecrackers, of gathering dandelions, of Grandma's belly-busting dinner. It was a summer of sorrows and marvels and gold-fuzzed bees. A magical, timeless summer in the life of a twelve-year-old boy named Douglas Spaulding—remembered forever by the incomparable Ray Bradbury.

Woven into the novel are the following short stories: Illumination, Dandelion Wine, Summer in the Air, Season of Sitting, The Happiness Machine, The Night, The Lawns of Summer, Season of Disbelief, The Last--the Very Last, The Green Machine, The Trolley, Statues, The Window, The Swan, The Whole Town's Sleeping, Goodbye Grandma, The Tarot Witch, Hotter Than Summer, Dinner at Dawn, The Magical Kitchen, Green Wine for Dreaming.

Lord of the Flies is a novel by Nobel Prize-winning British author William Golding. The book focuses on a group of British boys stranded on an uninhabited island and their disastrous attempt to govern themselves. Themes include the tension between groupthink and individuality, between rational and emotional reactions, and between morality and immorality.

The novel has been generally well received. It was named in the Modern Library 100 Best Novels, and is popular reading in schools, especially in the English-speaking world.

Fifteen-year-old Laura lives apart from her family for the first time, teaching school in a claim shanty twelve miles from home. She is very homesick, but keeps at it so that she can help pay for her sister Mary's tuition at the college for the blind. During school vacations, Laura has fun with her singing lessons, going on sleigh rides, and, best of all, helping Almanzo Wilder drive his new buggy. Friendship soon turns to love for Laura and Almanzo in the romantic conclusion of this Little House book.

The Catcher in the Rye is an all-time classic in coming-of-age literature—an elegy to teenage alienation, capturing the deeply human need for connection and the bewildering sense of loss as we leave childhood behind. It's Christmas time, and Holden Caulfield has just been expelled from yet another school.

Fleeing the crooks at Pencey Prep, he pinballs around New York City seeking solace in fleeting encounters—shooting the bull with strangers in dive hotels, wandering alone around Central Park, getting beaten up by pimps, and cut down by erstwhile girlfriends. The city is both beautiful and terrible, in all its neon loneliness and seedy glamour, with a mingled sense of possibility and emptiness. Holden passes through it like a ghost, thinking always of his kid sister Phoebe, the only person who really understands him, and his determination to escape the phonies and find a life of true meaning.

J.D. Salinger's classic novel of teenage angst and rebellion was first published in 1951. The novel has been frequently challenged in court for its liberal use of profanity and portrayal of sexuality and was the book that every teenage boy wanted to read in the 1950s and 60s.

"Learn. That is the only thing that never fails." --Merlyn the Wizard

Before there was a famous king named Arthur, there was a curious boy named Wart and a kind old wizard named Merlyn. Transformed by Merlyn into the forms of his fantasy, Wart learns the value of history from a snake, of education from a badger, and of courage from a hawk--the lessons that help turn a boy into a man. Together, Wart and Merlyn take the reader through this timeless story of childhood and adventure--The Sword in the Stone. T.H. White's classic tale of the young Arthur's questioning and discovery of his life is unparalleled for its wit and wisdom, and for its colorful characters, from the wise Merlyn to the heroic Robin Wood to the warmhearted King Pellinore.

Golden Kite Honor artist Dennis Nolan has loved The Sword in the Stone since childhood, and he imbues White's tale with magic and mystery in his glowing illustrations. Readers who know Arthur or are meeting him for the first time will delight in this beautiful rendering of one of the greatest stories of all time.

The eagerly anticipated sequel to the Pulitzer Prize–winning Angela’s Ashes, 'Tis follows Frank McCourt's journey from impoverished immigrant to brilliant teacher and raconteur. Landing in New York at age nineteen, Frank encounters the vivid hierarchies of this “classless country,” gets drafted into the army, and is sent to Germany to train dogs and type reports. His voice—uncanny in humor and astonishing in dialogue—renders these experiences spellbinding.

Upon returning to America in 1953, Frank works on the docks, always resisting the norm of sticking to one’s own kind. He knows education is his way out and, despite leaving school at fourteen, talks his way into New York University. There, he falls in love and begins to find his place in the world. Frank's journey is a tale of redemption, where storytelling itself is the source of salvation.

Greenville County, South Carolina, is a wild, lush place that is home to the Boatwright family—a tight-knit clan of rough-hewn, hard-drinking men who shoot up each other's trucks, and indomitable women who get married young and age too quickly. At the heart of this story is Ruth Anne Boatwright, known simply as Bone, a bastard child who observes the world around her with a mercilessly keen perspective. When her stepfather Daddy Glen, cold as death, mean as a snake, becomes increasingly more vicious toward her, Bone finds herself caught in a family triangle that tests the loyalty of her mother, Anney—and leads to a final, harrowing encounter from which there can be no turning back.

Kokoro (1914) is a novel by Natsume Sōseki. Set during a period of modernization in Japan, Kokoro is a story of family, faith, and tragedy that explores timeless themes of isolation and identity. Spanning generations, Kokoro is a classic novel from one of Japan's most successful twentieth century writers.

Tradition and change, life and death--such are the subjects of Sōseki's masterful, understated tale of unassuaged guilt. On vacation with a friend, the narrator meets an older man who becomes a patient mentor for the young student. Soon, he begins visiting Sensei and his wife at their home in Tokyo, where they live an affluent, simple life. As the years go by, the narrator becomes aware of a secret from Sensei's past, which his mentor promises to reveal when the time is right. When his father falls ill--around the time of the end of Meiji society--the narrator returns home to be closer to his family. As he tries to remain positive around so much sorrow, he begins to miss his Sensei, who is now getting old himself. As his father prepares to leave the mortal world, the narrator receives a lengthy letter from Tokyo, containing his Sensei's story within. As one era merges into the next, he reads of the suffering and mistakes his Sensei experienced and incurred on his path through life, drawing them closer and leaving the narrator with some wisdom to remember him by.

Eminently human, Kokoro is a beloved story of isolation, morality, and conflict from a master of Japanese fiction.

Sunny Foster waited her entire life to leave her truck stop home town of Beloit, Wisconsin. Her eighteen years had been nothing but pain and heartache, from the mysterious disappearance of her father to the fact that her first boyfriend left her for a world of drugs and addiction. And her mother, a high-school teacher, was in legal trouble for dating a nineteen-year old student.

Out of the wreckage of Sunny's life comes a way of hope in the form of Jahil, a Mexican immigrant, with a tragic past. Jahil has seen more of the world then Sunny could ever dream of, but there's a reason for that. When Sunny's mother goes missing the week of Christmas, the sheltered Midwestern girl must team with a modern-day rogue's gallery of punks, freaks, angels, demons and one Aztec demi-god, in a sexy, erotic, adventure down the rabbit hole of the Midwest.

Hidden in the mountains of East Tennessee, an eleven-year-old goes about the business of being a boy during the summer of 1970. Within a balance of terror and innocence, he bears silent witness to ghosts of the dead and the cruelties of a teenage killer while local justice plays out in a community carved from legacies of coal mining and religion.

Like many homeless kids, fifteen-year-old Mathias Drvar died on the streets. Unlike the rest, he came back– as a vampire.

If Mathias thought being homeless sucked, being a vampire is worse. The vampires who transformed him believe he is the reincarnation of an ancient king. They expect him to quit swearing, use a napkin, and play by their weird, ancient rules. F— that.

But after the reigning queen assaults Mathias, he has visions of a past life in which he was that king. Turns out the current queen killed him then, and wants to kill him again. He’d better grow up fast, because if he doesn’t his second life may be shorter than his first.

Published originally in 1941, The Black Stallion is about a young boy, Alec Ramsay, who finds a wild black stallion at a small Arabian port on the Red Sea. Between the black stallion and young boy, a strange understanding grew that led them through untold dangers as they journeyed to America. Nor could Alec understand that his adventures with the black stallion would capture the interest of an entire nation.

"Even if a magician's powers surface of their own accord, he will soon be dead if he does not gain the knowledge of how to control them." Alone among all the novices in the Magicians' Guild, only Sonea comes from lowly beginnings. Yet she has won powerful allies—including Lord Dannyl, newly promoted to Guild Ambassador. But Dannyl must now depart for the Elyne court, leaving Sonea at the mercy of the lies and malicious rumors her enemies are busy spreading ... until the High Lord Akkarin steps in. The price of Akkarin's support is dear, however, because Sonea, in turn, must protect his mysteries and a secret that could lead a young novice mage deep into the darkness.

Meanwhile, Dannyl's first order to resume High Lord Akkarin's long-abandoned research into ancient magical knowledge is setting him on an extraordinary journey fraught with unanticipated peril as he moves ever-closer to a future both wondrous ... and terrible.

The town of Greenwood had always enjoyed a placid, yet somewhat boring existence, being a haven for both nature enthusiasts and for its residence who wish to live a peaceful life. Tristan Cain however dreams of something bigger; to have a unique and exciting life. Little does he know that you have to be careful for what you wish for.

Tristan thinks of himself as fairly normal, even boring actually, but there has always been something a little odd about him, and lately things seemed to be getting weirder. It started as a feeling of unease, but soon Tristan notices strange men and an alarming increase in oddities around the town.

Reluctantly, he accepts the help of his guardian and finds himself being pulled into the world of the supernatural against his will, as he comes to suspect that he himself is not what he seems.