Hang onto your hats, middle-schoolers! Peter Burns takes you on a swashbuckling adventure in The School for Thieves, a story that combines inspirations from Charles Dickens and Alexander Dumas.

Tom Morgan is an orphan living by his wits in a future London, where kids struggle for survival as workhouse slaves. Those clever enough to escape child snatchers work as thieves and peddlers. If that’s not enough, a deadly epidemic is on the rampage. Tom’s fortunes change when Hezekiah von Stuppe, a...

It’s hard to review a novel about child abuse objectively. Any decent person would react with horror and disgust. What makes it even harder is the detail with which the author deals with the subject.

Katerina Theodorakis, a native of New York, is married to a Greek electrician and lives in a small village on the island of Crete. Fluent in both English and Greek, she makes a happy home for herself and her daughter Aspasia while her husband is away on a long sea voyage. Katerina’s relationships...

Do you ever have such strong feelings that you’re afraid to let them out? After fifty-seven years of pent-up emotions, Artie Dam contemplates suicide. He feels too much about everything: his dead parents and sister, his son Rob, his absent friend Flossie, the kids in his history classes, and his dread of the president poised to take office in 2025.

It’s hard to reconcile Artie’s misery with the facts of his life. His marriage to Evie is solid, if imperfect. He communicates well with his...