On May 18, 1980, eleven-year-old Jessie Marlowe and her best friends, Eddie and Sam, are in a forest near Mount St. Helens when the months of wondering whether the volcano will erupt are finally answered--all three are badly burned, but it is up to Jessie to protect the boys as best she can and hope that somebody comes to rescue them.

Sixteen-year-old Gemma, a British city-dweller, is abducted while on vacation with her parents and taken to the Australian outback, where she soon realizes that escape attempts are futile, and in time she learns that her captor is not as despicable as she first believed.

Stumpy, Murray, Gwendolyn, and Kona recruit Herman the crow and 200 owls to help with their Master Plan to assist the animals of Gooseberry Park that are in trouble because of a months-long drought.

In Pompeii in AD 79, eleven-year-old slave boy Marcus runs away with his father, who has been sold to become a gladiator, and they escape to Vesuvius, only to return to the city the following morning to warn the inhabitants of the coming eruption.

The adventures of an unusual dog, part St. Bernard, part Scotch shepherd, that is forcibly taken to the Klondike gold fields where he eventually becomes the leader of a wolf pack.

Given his lifetime assignment at the Ceremony of Twelve, Jonas becomes the receiver of memories shared by only one other in his community and discovers the terrible truth about the society in which he lives.

"It's 1900, and Charlie feels lucky to live in Galveston, Texas. Sure, there are storms sometimes. But nobody worries about hurricanes. Even a famous weather expert says it's impossible for a strong hurricane to strike Galveston. Which is why few people worry on the morning of September 8, when a big storm starts to brew. but Charlie watches with growing horror as monster waves rise up from the sea, as the wind starts to scream. by night, much of...

After a plane crash, thirteen-year-old Brian spends fifty-four days in the wilderness, learning to survive with only the aid of a hatchet given him by his mother, and learning also to survive his parents' divorce.

Roz the robot discovers that she is alone on a remote, wild island with no memory of where she is from or why she is there, and her only hope of survival is to try to learn about her new environment from the island's hostile inhabitants.

"The snow came down faster than train crews could clear the tracks, piling up in drifts 20 feet high. At the Wellington train depot in the Cascade Mountains, two trains sat stranded, blocked in by snow slides to the east and west. Some passengers braved the storm to hike off the mountain, but many had no choice but to wait out the storm. But the storm didn't stop. One day passed, then two, three...six days. The snow turned to rain. Then, just after...