Frank Carlson Library

"In an alternative version of Victorian London, a seventeen-year-old Dodger, a cunning and cheeky street urchin, unexpectedly rises in life when he saves a mysterious girl, meets Charles Dickens, and unintentionally puts a stop to the murders of Sweeny Todd"--

A talking cat, intelligent rats, and a strange boy cooperate in a Pied Piper scam until they try to con the wrong town and are confronted by a deadly evil rat king.

Post-life citizens Breath challenged vertically disadvantaged (buried, not short) Johnny Maxwell's new friends not appreciate the term "ghosts," but they are, well, dead. The town council wants to sell the cemetery, and its inhabitants aren't about to take that lying down! Johnny is the only one who can see them, and the previously alive need his help to save their home and their history. Johnny didn't mean to become the voice for the lifeless, but...

The alien spaceship is in his sights. His finger is on the Fire button. Johnny Maxwell is about to set the new high score on the computer game Only You Can Save Mankind. Suddenly: We wish to talk. Huh? We surrender. The aliens aren't supposed to surrender -- they're supposed to die! Now what is Johnny going to do with a fleet of alien prisoners who know their rights under the international rules of war and are demanding safe-conduct? It's hard enough...

Reluctant to believe that there's a world outside the department store in which they live, Torrit, Dorcas, and the other nomes look to Masklin, a newly arrived "outsider," to lead them to a safe haven when the store goes out of business.

An illustrated collection of fourteen short stories featuring "dragons and wizards, councilors and mayors, an adventurous tortoise and a monster in a lake, along with plenty of pointy hats and a few magic spells" written when the author was a teenaged newspaper reporter.

After twelve-year-old Johnny Maxwell suddenly starts seeing and talking to ghosts, he and his friends become involved in a battle to save the local cemetery.