Twelve-year-olds Alex and Renata are on the run from the Order, which is on the brink of creating an army of indestructible stone warriors to carry out their evil schemes, and only the Lost Spells which his mother used to bring Alex back to life can stop them--and undoing the powerful magic that created the chaos that is now loose in Egypt might very well kill him.

"Widowed at forty, with four children and not enough money, Nora has lost the love of her life, Maurice, the man who rescued her from the stifling world to which she was born. And now she fears she may be drawn back into it. Wounded, strong-willed, clinging to secrecy in a tiny community where everyone knows your business, Nora is drowning in her own sorrow and blind to the suffering of her young sons, who have lost their father. Yet she has moments...

"A mother and son use their imagination to have fun on a rainy day."--

"Rachel Jenner is walking in a Bristol park with her eight-year-old son Ben when he asks if he can run ahead. It's an ordinary request on an ordinary Sunday afternoon, and Rachel has no reason to worry--until Ben vanishes. Police are called, search parties go out, and Rachel, already insecure after her recent divorce, feels herself coming undone. As hours and then days pass without a sign of Ben, everyone who knew him is called into question, from...

"Frances Price--tart widow, possessive mother, and Upper East Side force of nature--is in dire straits, beset by scandal and impending bankruptcy. Her adult son Malcolm is no help, mired in a permanent state of arrested development. And then there's the Prices' aging cat, Small Frank, who Frances believes houses the spirit of her late husband, an infamously immoral litigator and world-class cad whose gruesome tabloid death rendered Frances and Malcolm...

Thirteen-year-old Conor awakens one night to find a monster outside his bedroom window, but not the one from the recurring nightmare that began when his mother became ill--an ancient, wild creature that wants him to face truth and loss.

"Nothing can save Alex Sennefer's life. That's what the doctors say, but his mom knows it's not true. She knows that the Lost Spells of the Egyptian Book of the Dead can pull her son back from the brink. The problem? When she uses the spells, five Death Walkers are also brought back to life. An ancient evil has been unleashed. Long-dead mummies are awakening. New York City is overrun by scorpions. And worst of all for Alex, his mom and the Lost Spells...

"[A] portrait of a family, and a testament to the redemptive power of storytelling. On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born--a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam--and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable...