Frances: 2004 books

... A few weeks before Amor was born, his weak, selfish boy-father - whose name was King Mordreth also - had been killed while hunting, and his fair mother with the clear eyes died when he was but a few hours old. But early in that day she sent for her venerable friend and teacher, who was said to...

This high-interest, low-vocabulary novella is intended for adult basic education (ABE) and English as a Second Language (ESL) readers. Twelve-year-old Luc Caron sees two German planes shoot down a British plane in the skies over his village in northern France during WWI. He watches in horror as the...

As a young boy in seventeenth-century Portugal, Juan Pereira lived a Christian life with his mother and father, but he often wondered why he was not a choir boy like most of his friends. One fateful night, he discovers the truth: he is of Jewish descent, and his real name is not Juan but Benjamin....

They have to be lying when they tell her she was dead. With no memory of her past, and no idea who she actually is, Nora has few options. Alone, and at the mercy of the Mercenary Defense Conglomerate, she searches for clues into her past, and the truth about her supposed demise.

The Altar Made An Inauspicious Start To Marriage But because dire financial straits had bound her to the enigmatic Earl of Caldbeck, Catherine Maury resolved to make the best of it. Yet could she break through his mysterious restraint and uncover the secret of his true nature? Charles...

The story of several generations of a family, as seen through the wonderings and wanderings of it youngest daughter; uses dreams, stories, trips, journals, and letters to trace the power of commitments and consciousness, memory and forgetting, reality and dream, mythology and religion, and mental...

Everybody knew that books were dangerous. Read the wrong book, it was said, and the words crawled around your brain on black legs and drove you mad, wicked mad. Mosca Mye was born at a time sacred to Goodman Palpitattle, He Who Keeps Flies out of Jams and Butterchurns, which is why her father insisted...

Mosca Mye and Eponymous Clent are at it again. Escaping disaster by the skin of their teeth, they find refuge in Toll, a strange gateway town where visitors may neither enter nor leave without paying a price. By day, the city is well-mannered and orderly; by night, it’s host to rogues and villains....

Verdigris (n.): a blue-green rust that tarnishes ageing and forgotten copper coins, altering them entirely . . . One evening, Ryan and his friends steal some coins from a well. Soon after, strange things begin to happen. Peculiar burn marks appear on Ryan’s knuckles and light bulbs mysteriously...

Zip, a little fox terrier, lives in the town of Maplewood in the house of his owner, Dr. Elsworth. Each day when Dr. Elsworth drives his carriage to visit his patients, Zip goes along with him so that he can keep the doctor company and, most importantly, visit with the other animals in the town. Zip...

Accounts of elfin mounds and fairy hills abound here. So do fables of little men and treasures of gold, fairy servants, and spirits of water, forest, and meadow. Nearly 50 charming fairy tales and fantasies — gathered from Scotland, Ireland, Sweden, China, and other faraway places — are retold here. For ages 10 and up.

A hundred years ago the spell placed upon the Shard of Dancun by the ancient wizards was undone and evil consumed the Shadow Hills. Now, as the Flying Comet appears again, Princess Airia Nyuru must flee her home for the safety of the Hamikai Temple. When a king attempts to kidnap her, she and her...

In her dreams, Phoebe twirls through rows of sea island cotton as a white dress blows around her knees like a breeze. As she dances, she loses all memory of being born a slave on an Alabama plantation. She lifts up her feet and flies high above the fields, as light as air. Before her a single white...

Winner of the California Young Reader Medal in the high school category and an ALA Best Book of the Year. Following the death of his parents in a car accident, fifteen-year-old Matt McKendrick runs away from his hometown with his small, deaf sister, Katie, to prevent her from being placed in...