Kenneth Oppel

"Mr. Cruse, how high would you like to fly?" A smile soared across my face." As high as I possibly can." Pilot-in-training Matt Cruse and Kate de Vries, expert on high-altitude life-forms, are invited aboard the Starclimber, a vessel that literally climbs its way into the cosmos. Before they even set foot aboard the ship, catastrophe strikes: Kate announces she is engaged--and not to Matt. Despite this bombshell, Matt and Kate embark on their journey into space, but soon the ship is surrounded by strange and unsettling life-forms, and the crew is forced to combat devastating mechanical failure. For Matt, Kate, and the entire crew of the Starclimber, what began as an exciting race to the stars has now turned into a battle to save their lives. Award-winning and bestselling author Kenneth Oppel brings us back to a rich world of flight and fantasy in this breathtaking new sequel to Airborn and Skybreaker.

The forest heaves and splits in a terrible quake, and Griffin, a newborn Silverwing, is sucked deep into the earth. Drawn into the underworld, he must confront the ghosts of his father's past before they threaten to take him, too. When Griffin is sucked into the Underworld, his father Shade must act fast--for legend says that if the living stumble into the land of the dead, they only have a short time before death claims them as its own. But something else is hunting Griffin, too. Something dark. Something sinister. Something buried deep in a past that Shade hoped he'd never have to revisit. Who will find Griffin first? And will it even matter if none of them can make it back into the land of the living? This thrilling companion novel concludes the Silverwing series.

When eternal darkness threatens to invade, Shade and Marina must journey to the far southern jungle to save the world in this thrilling sequel to Silverwing. Shade, a young Silverwing bat in search of his father, discovers a mysterious Human building containing a vast forest. Home to thousands of bats, the indoor forest is as warm as a summer night and teeming with insects to eat. And through the glass roof, the bats can finally see the sun, free from the tyranny of the deadly owls. Is this Paradise the fulfillment of Nocturna's Promise to return the bats to the light of day? Shade and his Brightwing friend Marina aren't so sure. Shade has seen Humans enter the forest and take away hundreds of sleeping bats for an unknown purpose. And where is Shade's father? It isn't long before Shade and Marina are swept up on a perilous journey that takes them to the far southern jungle--the homeland of Goth, now king of all the Vampyrum Spectrum: cannibal bats with three-foot wingspans. With the help of an abandoned owl prince and General Cortez's rat army, Shade must use all his resourcefulness to find his father--and stop Goth from harnessing the dark powers of Cama Zotz to create eternal night. In this continuation of Shade's saga, Kenneth Oppel recaptures the adventure and poignancy of Silverwing, which Smithsonian magazine called "a tour-de-force fantasy," and takes it to a new level of excitement.

Shade is a young silverwing bat, the runt of his colony. But he's determined to prove himself on the long, dangerous winter migration to Hibernaculum, millions of wingbeats to the south. During a fierce storm, he loses the others and soon faces the most incredible journey of his young life. Desperately searching for a way to rejoin his flock, Shade meets a remarkable cast of characters: Marina, a Brightwing bat with a strange metal band on her leg; Zephyr, a mystical albino bat with an unusual gift; and Goth, a gigantic carnivorous vampire bat. But which ones are friends and which ones are enemies? In this epic story of adventure and suspense, Shade is going to need all the help he can find -- if he hopes to ever see his family again.

As the sun sets on the time of the dinosaurs, a new world is left in its wake. . . . Dusk He alone can fly and see in the dark, in a colony where being different means being shunned--or worse. As the leader's son, he is protected, but does his future lie among his kin? Carnassial He has the true instincts of a predator, and he is determined that his kind will not only survive but will dominate the world of beasts. From the author of the internationally acclaimed Silverwing trilogy comes an extraordinary adventure set 65 million years ago. Kenneth Oppel, winner of a Michael L. Printz Honor for Airborn, has crafted a breathtaking animal tale that reaches out to the human in all of us.

Matt Cruse, the brave young cabin boy from Airborne and a student at the Airship Academy, and Kate de Vries, a young heiress, team up with a gypsy and a daring captain to find a long-lost airship, rumored to carry a treasure beyond imagination. Reprint.

Sailing toward dawn, and I was perched atop the crow's nest, being the ship's eyes. We were two nights out of Sydney, and there'd been no weather to speak of so far. I was keeping watch on a dark stack of nimbus clouds off to the northwest, but we were leaving it far behind, and it looked to be smooth going all the way back to Lionsgate City. Like riding a cloud. . . . Matt Cruse is a cabin boy on the Aurora, a huge airship that sails hundreds of feet above the ocean, ferrying wealthy passengers from city to city. It is the life Matt's always wanted; convinced he's lighter than air, he imagines himself as buoyant as the hydrium gas that powers his ship. One night he meets a dying balloonist who speaks of beautiful creatures drifting through the skies. It is only after Matt meets the balloonist's granddaughter that he realizes that the man's ravings may, in fact, have been true, and that the creatures are completely real and utterly mysterious. In a swashbuckling adventure reminiscent of Jules Verne and Robert Louis Stevenson, Kenneth Oppel, author of the best-selling Silverwing trilogy, creates an imagined world in which the air is populated by transcontinental voyagers, pirates, and beings never before dreamed of by the humans who sail the skies.

From critically acclaimed author Sandra Benitez comes a compelling novel that takes one woman on a journey from Minnesota to Mexico in a search that tests her marriage, uncovers family secrets, and forces her to discover who she truly is. Annie Rush -- a 34-year-old Minnesotan--seems to be living every woman's dream: She has an interesting job, loyal husband, and adorable sons. But just beneath the surface, a series of family tragedies haunts her, including the death of her twin sister more than three decades earlier. Her father, plagued by guilt, shot himself soon thereafter; a few years later Annie's brother Hub Hart left home for good. While they haven't had contact for decades, the death of their mother compels Annie to embark on a search for her lost sibling. Hub's trail takes Annie all the way to Oaxaca, Mexico, a town exuberant with Christmas and the Night of the Radishes celebrations. Amid the vibrant festivities, Annie is drawn to Joe, a Berkeley professor staying at the same inn. She must decide whether her love for her husband is great enough to resist Joe, and, ultimately, who was to blame for her sister's death.

The forest heaves and splits in a terrible quake, and Griffin, a newborn Silverwing, is sucked deep into the earth. Drawn into the underworld, he must confront the ghosts of his father's past before they threaten to take him, too. When Griffin is sucked into the Underworld, his father Shade must act fast--for legend says that if the living stumble into the land of the dead, they only have a short time before death claims them as its own. But something else is hunting Griffin, too. Something dark. Something sinister. Something buried deep in a past that Shade hoped he'd never have to revisit. Who will find Griffin first? And will it even matter if none of them can make it back into the land of the living? This thrilling companion novel concludes the Silverwing series.

One man's blood could hold the key to curing cancer. That man is a death row killer. And he'll kill again rather than give it to you. How badly do you want it? David Haines sits on death row, imprisoned for murdering leading research doctors in the name of God. Meanwhile, the brilliant oncologist Dr. Laura Donaldson battles a disease that kills just as ruthlessly, and in an ironic twist of fate, Laura discovers that the murderer may hold within him the cure for cancer. When she unwittingly helps Haines escape from prison, she and FBI agent Kevin Sheldrake--a man with his own demons to overcome -- embark on a terrifying manhunt that takes them across the country and deep into their own troubled pasts. For both Laura and Kevin it is imperative that the killer be brought back alive -- but Haines would sooner kill himself and everyone else rather than offer his precious blood for medical science. Kenneth Oppel brilliantly entwines three compelling characters in this masterfully paced thriller that moves seamlessly between the worlds of science and religion. The Devil's Cure will keep readers on the edge of their seats.