Italy 1899: Fiery-tempered, seductive medium Alessandra Poverelli levitates a table at a Spiritualist seance in Naples. A reporter photographs the miracle, and wealthy, skeptical, Jewish psychiatrist Camillo Lombardi arrives in Naples to investigate. When she materializes the ghost of his dead mother, he risks his reputation and fortune to finance a tour of the Continent, challenging the scientific and academic elite of Europe to test Alessandra's mysterious powers. She will help him rewrite Science. His fee will help her escape her sadistic husband Pigotti and start a new life in Rome. Newspapers across Europe trumpet her Cinderella story and baffling successes, and the public demands to know - does the "Queen of Spirits" really have supernatural powers? Nigel Huxley is convinced she's simply another vulgar, Italian trickster. The icy, aristocratic detective for England's Society for the Investigation of Mediums launches a plot to trap and expose her. Meanwhile, the Vatican is quietly digging up her childhood secrets, desperate to discredit her supernatural powers; her abusive husband Pigotti is coming to kill her; and the tarot cards predict catastrophe. Praised by Kirkus Reviews as an "enchanting and graceful narrative that absorbs readers from the first page," The Witch of Napoli masterfully resurrects the bitter, 19th century battle between Science and religion over the possibility of an afterlife. Michael Schmicker is an investigative journalist and co-author of The Gift: ESP: The Extraordinary Experiences of Ordinary People (St. Martin's Press). He lives in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Donna Jo Napoli has received acclaim for her young adult works and is especially known for her historical novels and her retellings of myth and fairy tales. In this full-length critical study, Hilary S. Crew integrates criticism and biographical information to illuminate Napoli's many novels, as well as other writings by Napoli such as her essays on writing for young people and her book, Language Matters. A comprehensive critical analysis of 19 novels, Donna Jo Napoli: Writing with Passion provides an understanding of how Napoli's life and profession as a professor of linguistics influences her writing for young adults. The novels analyzed in this study include Napoli's retellings of such fairy tales and myths as The Magic Circle, Zel, Bound, Beast, and Sirena; novels whose stories are drawn from religious and traditional sources such as Song of the Magdalene, Breath, and Hush; such historical works as The Smile, Daughter of Venice, and two novels set during WWII, Stones in Water and Fire in the Hills; and her most recent book for young adults, Alligator Bayo. An interview with Napoli concludes this significant resource for those working with young adults.

A boy named Jack trades a cow for a handful of beans. But Jack isn't crazy--he's been haunted since the day his father climbed up into the clouds and vanished. When the beans provide a way for Jack to pursue his father, he enters the Giant's world, where he not only discovers the terrifying ends of greed and desire, but sustenance, love, and the means to build a life.

The gods grant immortality to the mermaid Sirena when she rescues a human man from the sea and they fall in love, but his mortality creates great conflict between love and honor when he is called to defend Greece in the Trojan War.

Jimmy, the froglet son of an enchanted frog-prince, tries to save his pond from the evil hag and in the process finds himself transformed into a human boy.

Who is that handsome green stranger? None of the pond dwellers has ever seen the peculiar new frog before. They found him sitting in a pile of human clothes outside the hag’s house. What a strange frog he is! He gets his feet tangled when he tries to jump, he refuses to eat bugs, and he can’t tell a toad from a frog. He calls himself “De Fawg Pin,” and he’s about to turn pond life topsy-turvy! “The frog prince motif has inspired many books, but few as original as this novel.”—Booklist “An animal fantasy that fairy tale readers will relish.”—Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, starred review

Salz is a boy afflicted with cystic fibrosis -- though in the Middle Ages in Saxony no one can identify it as such. Instead he is an outcast, living with his unfeeling father and superstitious brothers in a hovel outside Hameln. His grandmother has kept Salz alive by having him avoid the mead and beer commonly drunk by all and by teaching him how to clear his lungs. When the townsfolk of Hameln are affected by a mold that grows on the hops -- poisoning their mead and beer -- Salz is one of the few who are unaffected. The mold's effect is hallucinogenic, and soon Hameln is in the grips of a plague of madness, followed by a plague of rats. It is only Salz who can proclaim the truth -- although it might cost him his life.