Meet Alex Rider, the reluctant teenage spy. When his guardian dies in suspicious circumstances, fourteen-year-old Alex Rider finds his world turned upside down. Within days he's gone from schoolboy to superspy. Forcibly recruited into MI6, Alex has to take part in gruelling SAS training exercies. Then, armed with his own special set of secret gadgets, he's off on his first mission ...

Beverly, Harriet, Madison, and Eston are Thomas Jefferson's children by one of his slaves, Sally Hemings, and while they do get special treatment - better work, better shoes, even violin lessons - they are still slaves, and are never to mention who their father is. The lighter-skinned children have been promised a chance to escape into white society, but what does this mean for the children who look more like their mother? As each child grows up,...