Newberry Honour Award Winner & National Book Award Winner. Matt is six years old when he discovers that he is different from other children and other people. To most, Matt isn't considered a boy at all, but a beast, dirty and disgusting. But to El Patron, lord of a country called Opium, Matt is the guarantee of eternal life. El Patron loves Matt as he loves himself - for Matt is himself. They share the exact same DNA. As Matt struggles to understand his existence and what that existence truly means, he is threatened by a host of sinister and manipulating characters, from El Patron's power-hungry family to the brain-deadened eejits and mindless slaves that toil Opium's poppy fields. Surrounded by a dangerous army of bodyguards, escape is the only chance Matt has to survive. But even escape is no guarantee of freedom . . . because Matt is marked by his difference in ways that he doesn't even suspect. Praise for The House of Scorpions: 'It's a pleasure to read science fiction that's full of warm, strong characters... that doesn't rely on violence as the solution to complex problems of right and wrong. It's a pleasure to read.' Ursula K. LeGuin 'Fabulous' Diana Wynne Jones Also by Nancy Farmer: The Sea of Trolls Land of the Silver Apples The Islands of the Blessed The Lord of Opium

Discover this internationally bestselling, National Book Award–winning young adult classic about what it means to be human with an updated, reimagined cover! Matt Alacrán wasn’t born. He was harvested. His DNA came from El Patrón, the drug-lord ruler of the country of Opium. Most people hate and fear clones like Matt—except for El Patrón. El Patrón loves Matt as he loves himself, because Matt is himself. As Matt struggles to understand his existence, he is threatened by a sinister cast of characters, and realizes escape is his only chance to survive. But escape from the Alacrán Estate is no guarantee of freedom.

A National Book Award Winner-A Newbery Honor Book-Some see Matt as a beast. But for El Patrn, Matt is a guarantee of eternal life, for they share the same DNA. Matt tries to understand his existence while facing sinister characters. An Accelerated Reader-title for Ages 11 to 14.

The teenage princess of a future-world Canadian superpower, where royal children are held hostage to keep their countries from waging war, falls in love with an American prince who rebels against the brutal rules governing their existences.

"Based on the classic fable, a crocodile and a scorpion attempt to cross a river without giving in to their natural instincts"--

“An exceptional, fast-paced thriller featuring a tech-empowered assassin whose pattern and objective you’ve never seen before, chased by a heroine with tenacious grit.”—David Brin, author of The Postman and Existence Quinn Mitchell is a nine-to-five spy—an intelligence analyst for the CIA during the day, and a suburban wife and mother on evenings and weekends. After her young daughter is killed in a tragic accident, sending her life into a tailspin, Quinn hopes to find a new start in her latest assignment: investigating a series of bizarre international assassinations whose victims have been found with numeric codes tattooed, burned, or carved into their flesh. As Quinn follows the killer’s trail across the globe, always one body behind, she begins uncovering disturbing connections between the murders—and herself. Every lead she tracks down in pursuit of the assassin brings Quinn one step closer to the Epoch Index, a mysterious encrypted message discovered in the archives of the Large Hadron Collider. Its origins are unknown and decrypting it is beyond even the CIA. Yet nothing else can possibly link together a slew of unsolvable murders, an enigmatic and sophisticated serial killer who always seems to be three steps ahead, a quirky young physics prodigy whose knowledge extends well beyond her years, and, underlying everything, the inescapable tragedy of Quinn’s own past. Discovering the meaning of the Epoch Index leads Quinn to a shocking twist that shatters everything she thought she knew about the past, the future, and the delicate balance of right and wrong that she must now fight to preserve.

This supercharged thriller from master storyteller Andrew Kaplan introduces the Scorpion, the CIA’s top agent in the Middle East, and launches the bestselling espionage series Kelly Ormont sprints down the narrow streets of Paris. When a car pulls up and a man points a gun at her, life as she knows it is over. Within days, this beautiful congressman’s daughter will be in the Middle East, where some of the wealthiest men in the world will bid to make her their slave. Only the Scorpion can save her now. An American raised among the Bedouin, the Scorpion is the CIA’s top agent in the Arabian peninsula. To save Kelly, he slips into the sinister underworld of human trafficking, where the kidnapped girl’s trail leads him to a Saudi prince with fanatical global ambitions. When the Scorpion discovers a link between the prince and the Russians, Kelly will not be the only person who needs a savior.