Stanley Nudelman turns the boring town of Dementedyville on its head when he buys a mysterious toy at his neighbor's yard sale. Sure, Zombiekins looks cuddly and creepy-cute - but expose him to moonlight, and strange things happen. When Stanley brings Zombiekins to school, he unleashes the worst zombie plague in fourth-grade history! Can Stanley find the courage to save the day before his teachers notice the class is full of zombies? Or will he soon join the ranks of the snuggily UNDEAD?

Things really stink in the Kingdom of Armpit. King Reginald the Not Very Realistic has had it up to here with his practical joker of a son Prince Harry. Even Sir Bedwetter can?t take the prince?s Royal Clowning Around! Enter Sir Fartsalot?the bravest, boldest, er, most potent knight in all the land! He?s on a quest to solve the riddle of the Foul West Wind?a ghastly odor that turns up whenever danger is lurking. Prince Harry decides to play the biggest, boogeriest prank of all time! He convinces Sir Fartsalot that The Booger, a frightful and repulsive villain, is on the prowl. But when a real Booger turns up, Harry, Sir Fartsalot and the knight?s old buddy Sir Knotaclew must set out on a hilarious quest to rid the world of the Snotty Scoundrel, once and for all!

When Ed Bagley wakes up in a yucky sewer --and discovers he's a zombie-- things can't get any weirder! That is, until his evil arm scurries off his shoulder and into the town of Mortlake to cause all sorts of trouble. Un-armed and dangerous, Ed teams up with his werewolf buddy Max Moon to track down his rogue limb and save Mortlake from the evil at the center of it all. This formerly unlucky kid is out to prove he really is all guts! But when he's faced with gross ghouls, wormy wraiths, freaky fat babies, and some seriously sinister clowns, will Ed and his undead friends have enough skin on their bones to save the day? Or will this arm-y prove too tough to hand-le? Hilariously illustrated zombie antics make this the perfect next book for fans of Zombiekins!

In a world full to bursting with would-be heroes, Jim couldn't be less interested in saving the day. His fireballs fizzle. He's awfully grumpy. Plus, he's been dead for about sixty years. When a renegade necromancer wrenches him from eternal slumber and into a world gone terribly, bizarrely wrong, all Jim wants is to find a way to die properly, once and for all. On his side, he's got a few shambling corpses, an inept thief, and a powerful death wish. But he's up against tough odds: angry mobs of adventurers, a body falling apart at the seams — and a team of programmers racing a deadline to hammer out the last few bugs in their AI. *Mogworld is the debut novel from video-game icon Yahtzee Croshaw (Zero Punctuation)! With an exclusive one-chapter preview of Yahtzee Croshaw's next novel, Jam—coming to bookstores in October 2012! *Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw's video review site, Zero Punctuation, receives over 2,500,000 unique hits a month, and has been licensed by G4 Television. *Yahtzee's blog receives about 150,000 hits per day. "The first legitimate breakout hit from the gaming community in recent memory." -Boing Boing

Victor Godwin, a serious-minded boy genius living in Philadelphia, discovers that Ben Franklin never died - he was put into suspended animation, and was hidden away for more than 200 years in Victor's basement! An accident re-awakens Ben centuries before he was supposed to be, and there's a problem - when Ben runs low on energy, he turns into a rampaging monster desperately hungry for electricity! All this while Victor is trying to take first place in the school science fair. But with one of history's preeminent scientists helping out, what could go wrong? "Victor is one of the funniest nerds in children's literature." - School Library Journal "A welcome diversion to pass the hours between scoring science-fair ribbons and exploding . . . home chemistry sets." - Booklist

Learning to read has never been more fun than it is with Ed and Fred! This hilarious beginner reader text has been carefully crafted to teach more than fifty first sight words—the simplest, most commonly used words young readers must learn to recognize “on sight.” The patterned structure makes the text accessible to beginners, while its humor is guaranteed to draw in even the most reluctant older readers. Readers who are fans of Fun with Ed and Fred can also brush up on their short vowels with Gran on a Fan and their long vowels with companion book Lazy Bear, Crazy Bear. As Kirkus Reviews said of Gran on a Fan: “New readers…will hardly be aware that they are supposed to be learning basic phonics because they will be giggling.”

New to the Random House list is author Bill Doyle with a tale of monsters, magic, and mayhem. After Keats and Henry lose their bikes, they need money—fast. So the help-wanted ad at the supermarket seems ideal for them. All they have to do is weed Hallway House's garden, find some lightbulbs in the attic, sweep the garage . . . and battle a shark-headed zombie. But no one told them about the giant bookworms in the library, the toe-biting carpet in the halls, and the kitchen sinkhole!