Mars and his friends have escaped the Martian colony and returned to Earth, to find that all the adults have vanished! A thrilling sci-fi adventure based on Season 3 of the Peabody Award–winning podcast. After Mars Patel fled the Martian colony and its erupting volcano, he headed for Earth with JP, Toothpick, Aurora, Cupcake (everyone’s favorite two-hundred-pound tardigrade), and genius billionaire Oliver Pruitt. But when they finally arrive, Mars is shocked to find that all the adults on Earth have mysteriously vanished. Aurora, the popular new principal of Pruitt Prep, thinks Earth is better off without the adults, while Mars, who’s now a celebrity, is desperate to find his mom. As tensions rise and new mysteries are revealed—including a secret lab, an impending election, and a wild new discovery on Mars—will Mars and his friends manage to unravel the truth? Or is Oliver Pruitt outplaying them all? A vibrant cast brings to life this tech-rich page-turner, based on the award-winning podcast.

Mars is on Mars! But as techie colonists and scrappy rebels clash, can Mars and his friends survive long enough to discover the planet’s dark secrets? Based on Season 2 of the Peabody Award–winning podcast. Six months ago, Mars Patel boarded a spaceship to travel to Oliver Pruitt’s colony on the planet Mars, and now he’s finally there. The journey gave Mars lots of time to bond with his copilots, but Mars and his new friends soon discover that Pruitt’s colonists aren’t the only people living on the inhospitable planet. A splinter group, led by the mysterious Fang, are desperate to go back to Earth—and they don’t care who they hurt in the process. Amid the slick subterranean colony filled with rules and giant, terrifying tardigrades who poop a lot, Mars searches for answers about Oliver Pruitt’s supposed plans—and the real reason the eccentric billionaire has been so invested in him all this time. Featuring thrilling technology, a diverse cast, and a gripping plot, this extraterrestrial adventure, a follow-up to The Unexplainable Disappearance of Mars Patel, is also based on the popular and award-winning podcast.

Returning to Earth after escaping the Martian colony, Mars Patel and his friends, along with genius billionaire Oliver Pruitt, discover that all the adults have mysteriously vanished and, as tensions rise and new mysteries are revealed, must somehow discover the truth.

You've heard the podcast. Now read along with Season One of the Recording Scripts behind the Peabody-Award winning family audio drama. "The Unexplainable Disappearance of Mars Patel" is the hit, sci-fi mystery adventure drama for middle grade kids and the entire family. Follow along as eleven-year-old Mars Patel and his pals JP, Toothpick, and Caddie set out on an audacious adventure in search of two missing friends. But the mysterious tech billionaire Oliver Pruitt might have a thing-or-two to say about their quest. "To the stars!" he likes to say, and in fact, that's just where they might be headed...

Along the train lines north of New York City, twelve-year-old neighbors Myla and Peter search for the link between Myla’s necklace and the disappearance of Peter’s brother, Randall. Thrown into a world of parkour, graffiti, and diamond-smuggling, Myla and Peter encounter a band of thugs who are after the same thing as Randall. Can Myla and Peter find Randall before it’s too late, and their shared family secrets threaten to destroy them all? Drawing on urban art forms and local history, Finding Mighty is a mystery that explores the nature of art and the unbreakable bonds of family.

What do you do when your sweetheart of five years dumps you for someone else before your senior year of college? Flee the country, obviously. A Jersey girl through and through, Kat Vespucci is a conservative American college student who escapes a nasty break-up by spending her senior year studying abroad in Berlin, Germany. She really wanted to travel to London, but her parents insisted she learn something about her roots. Having rarely left her home state of New Jersey, let alone traveled to a foreign country, Kat is completely unprepared for what lies ahead. Strange European customs, classmates from the former Eastern Bloc, anti-Americanism, German bureaucracy, history she's never heard of, and the persistent flasher who lurks in her neighborhood, all catch Kat by surprise. Meanwhile, she searches for her Uncle Otto, a relative the family hasn't seen since the war. At first, she feels like a house cat dropped into a lair of lions, yet she somehow manages to land and stay on her feet. Earth to Kat Vespucci is a comic, coming-of-age story about a young woman who does not discover herself and where she comes from until she leaves.

Being thirteen is happy, sad, humiliating, surprising, wonderful, awful, exciting, boring -- in other words, full of ups and downs. The thirteen-year-olds in Gary Soto's thirteen stories experience all this and more. In one story, a girl's world is turned upside down when she visits a college campus where she expects to find a rarified atmosphere of intellectual pursuit, only to meet a tour guide who is tattooed, overly pierced, hungover, and not at all focused on academics. In another, two girls test the attraction of their new bodies by flirting with boys at a mall and then find themselves in an uncomfortable and somewhat frightening situation. The stories in this book are about family relationships, friendships, self-worth, and questions of integrity.