Time to correct the theory that Vlad Temps was Bram Stokers model for Dracula. Stokers vampire count was not even from Earth. Black Sorcerers like him visit us through the Middlegrounds Gateways, portals that transport them throughout humankinds history. Some Midlanders come to Earth for sanctuary. Edoviov Alucard left the Middleground because Black Sorcerers would not tolerate vampires, even from a High family. When Sorcerys Grand Wizard banished them, Edoviov took his sister Catherine and fled to Earth. He turned their High Sorcerer Name backward to become Stokers fiction, setting himself up as Lord of Vampires. For Catherine, he had other plans. With two outlaw White Sorcerers, they entered into a pact to produce a Sorcerer strong enough (and Powerful enough) to take the Dark Throne. Since one of those Whites was the Middlegrounds only Time Wizard, it was now on their side. With Draculas gypsies and his damned magician, they made Catherine bare living children by the gifted outlaws. In the distant past, Dracula stashed Catherines family in a small barony. They tried to prepare them, casting strange and hideous protections. But the best laid plans Other Sorcerers have an eye on that Dark Throne. Their plan requires they rip off the children. Can the boys escape the destinies that others have planned for them? Follow across time and space to America where they battle to live free and escape the minions of the Blacks. While Rip collects a vicious black stallion and pearl-handled 44s, Andrs chief assets remain his quick wit and his hidden curse. Catherines boys cut a path through the Old South to Texas in the 1880s, hoping to elude pursuit while they try to discover their abilities and stay alive long enough to learn what they are and where they belong.

A Newbery Honor Book * Booklist Editors’ Choice * BookPage Best Books * Chicago Public Library Best Fiction * Horn Book Fanfare * Kirkus Reviews Best Books * Publishers Weekly Best Books * Wall Street Journal Best of the Year * An ALA Notable Book A young outcast is swept up into a thrilling and perilous medieval treasure hunt in this award-winning literary page-turner by acclaimed bestselling author Catherine Gilbert Murdock. The Book of Boy was awarded a Newbery Honor. “A treat from start to finish.”—Wall Street Journal Boy has always been relegated to the outskirts of his small village. With a hump on his back, a mysterious past, and a tendency to talk to animals, he is often mocked by others in his town—until the arrival of a shadowy pilgrim named Secondus. Impressed with Boy’s climbing and jumping abilities, Secondus engages Boy as his servant, pulling him into an action-packed and suspenseful expedition across Europe to gather seven precious relics of Saint Peter. Boy quickly realizes this journey is not an innocent one. They are stealing the relics and accumulating dangerous enemies in the process. But Boy is determined to see this pilgrimage through until the end—for what if St. Peter has the power to make him the same as the other boys? This epic and engrossing quest story by Newbery Honor author Catherine Gilbert Murdock is for fans of Adam Gidwitz’s The Inquisitor’s Tale and Grace Lin’s Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, and for readers of all ages. Features a map and black-and-white art by Ian Schoenherr throughout.

'Catherine Bailey has the great gift of bringing to life personal histories . . . Wonderfully paced and wholly satisfying' Kate Atkinson ___________________________________________________________ Berlin, September 1944. Ulrich von Hassell, former ambassador to Italy and a key member of the German Resistance, is executed for his part in an assassination plot against Hitler. In response to the attack, Himmler, leader of the SS, orders the arrest of all the families of the plotters. In a remote castle in Italy, von Hassell's beloved daughter, Fey, is discovered just when she thought she had escaped the Nazi net. She is arrested and her two sons, aged three and two are seized by the SS. Fey has no idea of her children's fate as she is dragged away on a terrifying journey to the darkest corners of a Europe savaged by war. Moving from a palazzo in the heart of the Italian countryside to the horrors of Buchenwald, Catherine Bailey tells an extraordinary story of resistance at the heart of the Second World War. The Lost Boys is an illuminating and devastating account of great personal sacrifice, of loss and, above all, of defiance.

Inspired by real events, Roxanne Bocyck’s debut novel Catherine’s Dream is a testament to the power and possibility of nurturing one’s dreams against all odds and overcoming fear and doubt with faith and determination. Catherine Soból is a Polish peasant woman in the early 1900s, who lives on an orchard outside of Kraków, Poland, and dreams of being an artist. Raised by an iron fist, Catherine is an old-world girl with new world aspirations. But how will she pursue her dreams of artistry when she must conceal her drawings from her father, a pragmatic peasant-farmer, who demands she work to support the family? In fact, much to Catherine’s dismay, he plans to marry her to a local village boy and settle into a life of security on the small apple orchard that is her dowry. Over and above her personal turmoil, the Great War has ended but the fighting over Poland’s border with Ukraine continues. Tension rises in Catherine’s family when she falls in love with Józef, a young, local blacksmith who creates beautiful jewelry and encourages her to follow her heart despite her family’s resistance to her artistic dreams. But the plans others force upon her, along with Józef’s disappearance - and probable death - on the war front, send her life skidding in a direction she must now tolerate but is unable live wholeheartedly. Sold as a “bride” to a crude lout of a man and shipped off to a mountain town in backwoods America, Catherine faces the cold winds of bad chance and other forces that seek to control her destiny, and learns that knowing what she wants, taking risks, and having faith are the keys to unlocking any obstacle that stands in the way of her living the life of her dreams.

A land- a building of several storeys of separate dwellings communicating by a common stair. Madge Ritchie moves her three young daughters into Catherine's Land when the death of her husband leaves them in reduced circumstances. By 1920 Madge can't imagine life without her noisy, nosy neighbours; though two of her girls, ambitious Abby and artistic Rachel, both dream of making their escape. Only Jennie, the middle child most like her gentle mother, is happy in the hurly-burly atmosphere of the tenements. But when Jim Gilbride and his sons Malcom and Rory move into the Ritchies' stair the lives of both families are to change dramatically- and the bonds of love and hatred, jealously and forgiveness are forged that will bind them all to Catherine's Land for ever.