Thirteen-year-old Lemony Snicket begins his apprenticeship with S. Theodora Markson of the secretive V.F.D. in the tiny dot of a town called Stain'd By The Sea, where he helps investigate the theft of a statue.

The Call of the Wild, by Jack London, is one of America's best-known novels. In his Reader's Companion to this new edition, Daniel Dyer provides a wealth of annotations explaining the book's many "sourdough" expressions and geographical references in order to help the modern reader see what London saw. Dyer also identifies characters in the novel - human and canine alike - whom London had known, and he spices his annotations with Northern lore and...

In Washington, D.C., twelve-year-old Florian Bates, a consulting detective for the FBI, and his best friend Margaret help thwart the biggest art heist in United States history.

"First published in 1838, ‘Oliver Twist' is one of the most admired novels by Charles Dickens, an English writer, and social critic. It is the story of a young orphan who dares to say, ""Please, sir, I want some more."" After escaping from the dark and dismal workhouse where he was born, Oliver finds himself on the mean streets of Victorian-era London and is unwittingly recruited into a scabrous gang of scheming urchins. In this band of petty thieves,...

Birdie Gaux's dog, Bowser, considers himself in charge of security at 19 Gentilly Lane, so when the house is broken into Bowser wants to find the man with the limeade aftershave (and the cat) responsible--but nobody seems to know what the culprits were looking for, or why a strange girl is asking questions about Birdie's father, a policeman who was killed in the line of duty years before Bowser was adopted.

After a class trip to a floating zoo where animals are mistreated and Savannah's missing pet monkey is found in a cage, Long Island sixth-grader Griffin Bing and his band of misfits plan a rescue.

Falsely accused of theft and murder, an orphaned peasant boy in fourteenth-century England flees his village and meets a larger-than-life juggler who holds a dangerous secret.

Griffin Bing is in big trouble when a Super Bowl ring disappears from his middle school's display case, replaced by Griffin's retainer, and the more he and his friends investigate, the worse his situation becomes.

While visiting a ranch near Yellowstone National Park with his parents, Summer, and her parents, Teddy Fitzroy investigates the disappearances of bison and an irreplaceable necklace.

A fifth-grader with a photographic memory and her friend Eric help solve the mystery of the stolen diamonds.