This collection of short works is comprised of pieces that previously appeared in such publications as The New Yorker, Playboy, and McSweeney's, in a volume that includes such tales as ""The Gingerbread Girl"" and "N."

A collection of nine short stories featuring ghosts, half-humans, unicorns, and other unusual creatures.

"An unspeakable crime. A confounding investigation...An eleven-year-old boy's violated corpse is found in a town park. Eyewitnesses and fingerprints point unmistakably to one of Flint City's most popular citizens. He is Terry Maitland, Little League coach, English teacher, husband, and father of two girls. Detective Ralph Anderson, whose son Maitland once coached, orders a quick and very public arrest. The case seems ironclad, especially when Anderson...

Bonkers: the new megaseries from New York Times bestselling author Patrick Carman There's something in Jenny's armpit, and it's getting bigger. Ten-year-old Jenny Kim and her two buddies, Fen Stenson and Barker Mifflin, live in the town of Nevermind, where strange happenings are so normal that finding a mysterious thing growing in your armpit isn't even considered a big deal. But when the mysterious thing gets so big Jenny has to haul it around in...

"Kelly Crosby is the new kid in school. So far, it's not going so well. He's already gotten lost, had trouble making friends, and annoyed the monster that lives in the school basement. That's right. This new school has a monster. Every year, at a party called Friiight Night, one (un)lucky kid is chosen to be the monster's special guest of honor. Guess whose luck is about to run out?"--

After a head injury brings on nightmares involving girls being tortured and murdered, Emma Rayburn contacts her estranged sister, Jessie, a psychic investigator. Another nightmare, in the woods this time. Different: she was running. Trying to escape. But the same ending: another dead girl ... Jessie, psychic investigator for a firm called Haven, has been estranged from her sister Emma for years. Now Emma is having nightmares, and the sisters discover...

It's the summer before middle school and eleven-year-old Bug's best friend Moira has decided the two of them need to use the next few months to prepare. For Moira, this means figuring out the right clothes to wear, learning how to put on makeup, and deciding which boys are cuter in their yearbook photos than in real life. But none of this is all that appealing to Bug, who doesn't particularly want to spend more time trying to understand how to be...

"Now wielding the Midnight Blade, Jack Sullivan and the gang are furiously searching for the villainous Thrull and his skeleton army. The clock is ticking: the enemy has begun constructing the Tower--a portal with the power to bring Rezzoch the Ancient, Destructor of Worlds, to our dimension. Equipped with a crucial clue discovered by June on her Wild Flight, the group does the once-unthinkable: they leave Wakefield behind and embark on an ... epic...

"Hollows Bend, New Hampshire, is a picture-perfect New England town where weekend tourists flock to see fall leaves and eat breakfast at the Stairway Diner. The crime rate--zero--is a point of pride for Sheriff Ellie Pritchett. The day the stranger shows up is when the trouble starts. The sheriff and her deputy investigate the mysterious teenage girl. None of the locals can place her. She can't--or won't-answer any questions. She won't even tell them...