A gripping World War One saga with a strong female protagonist, published for the third year of the war's centenary.Manon Wouters grew-up in the idyllic Belgian city of Damme, where she spent her afternoons cycling into beautiful Bruges to study nursing. But as Europe—and the world—erupted into a devastating war, teenaged Manon soon found herself faced with unbelievable choices. Would she hide? Or would she fight? As Manon toils away at the local hospital, no one would guess just how crucial a role she is really playing. A trained spy, Manon gathers information to send to the British to aid in ending the war. Soon, she uncovers information about a monster plane that must be stopped at all costs. As she races to fulfill her mission, Manon must confront enemies at every turn, and face a terrifying and sobering truth: that innocents are being killed on both sides of the front.

Set in the harsh desert world of the Arizona Territory and northern Mexico during the 1870s, Written in Blood, the first installment of the Desert Legends Trilogy, follows young Jim Doolen as he attempts to find some trace of the father who abandoned his family ten years earlier. As he travels through a scorched landscape very different from the lush West Coast forests of his home, Jim crosses paths with an assortment of intriguing characters, including an Apache warrior, a cave-dwelling mystic, an old Mexican revolutionary and a mysterious cowboy. And with each encounter he learns something more of the strange world he has entered and adds one more link in a chain that leads back to his father-and back to a dark, violent past. As his story approaches its thrilling conclusion in a ruined Mexican hacienda, Jim comes to realize that his father's life was much more complex than he had imagined, and that, in discovering his past, he has opened the way to his future. (20110101)From BooklistA Canadian teenager encounters road agents, roving Apaches, and any number of corpses while searching for his vanished father in this melodramatic tale of the Old West. Going on clues provided in a last letter laced with references to a troubled past, James sets out for a place called Casa Grande in Chihuahua. Before reaching the dusty, ruined hacienda to discover his father’s fate and survive a climactic gunfight, he is beaten and robbed; recovers from his wounds in the care of an eccentric old hermit, who fills him in on the importance of having a story; meets a cousin of Cochise whose band is subsequently ambushed by scalp hunters (and goes on to return the favor); and learns of his own family’s gore-spattered history. Told in a terse, present-tense narrative, James’ adventures will thrill all fans of traditional pulp-style oaters. Grades 6-9. --John Peters Review"Told in a terse, present-tense narrative, James' adventures will thrill all fans of traditional pulp-style oaters." (Booklist 20101001)"The story is very well written and will appeal to young readers, especially boys. It is full of tension and adventure...Recommended." (Tri State YA Book Review Committee 20120501)"Those readers of westerns and historical adventure who like a mix of action and information (actually quite a large set of readers) will be very taken with this book." (Resource Links 20101126)"Chapters are short and action filled, Jim is a likable character and reluctant readers will find this to be a fast-paced, easy-to-swallow tale of the Old West." (Kirkus Reviews 20110401)"Wilson is a talented writer, hooking readers within the first few pages of his novel and carrying them along almost effortlessly through the barren lands of Mexico and the Arizona Territory...This first installation is a perfect beginning to what is sure to be an enthralling trilogy that will invite young people into an older world with incredibly relevant contemporary themes." (www.keenreaders.org )"Has all the markers of a classic Western...Wilson's writing is vivid." (CM Magazine )"The tensions among American, Mexican, and Native factions are well drawn, and Wilson pulls no punches regarding the cruelty of the new world into which Jim finds himself thrown." (School Library Journal )

Sam and Annabel are pleased when they are selected to take a cruise to the Arctic. And they are thrilled when they learn that the cruise will take them past a site connected to the most famous mystery in Arctic history: the Franklin Expedition. But things on the cruise are not what they seem. When Sam and Annabel make a startling discovery on a small island close to where archaeologists are diving on the wreck of the Erebus, one of the Franklin's ships, they are confronted by an old enemy. Isolated and outnumbered, how can they possibly save the priceless artifact that may hold the answer to the Franklin mystery?

A trip to a remote lake in northern Ontario with his grandfather doesn't thrill Steve, especially since his twin brother, DJ, was taken to Central America. Matters start to look up when his grandfather tells Steve about the mysterious death of the artist Tom Thomson and sets him the task of finding Thomson's missing skull. Steve loves mysteries, but when odd things begin happening and strange people start threatening him, Steve wonders whether this is part of his grandfather's plan. Is this still a simple puzzle, or is something far more sinister going on? In this thrilling prequel to Lost Cause and Broken Arrow, the history- and mystery-loving Steve ends up in remote northern Ontario.

In the second installment of the Desert Legends Trilogy, Ghost Moon follows young James Doolen's story after he discovers the terrible truth about his father in Written in Blood. The year is 1878, and young Jim is not yet ready to return to Canada. Instead he heads up to New Mexico in hopes of finding work and building a life. On the way he meets Bill Bonney (later to be known as Billy the Kid), who takes him to a ranch south of the town of Lincoln, where they both find work as cowboys. Little does Jim know that he is about to get caught up in a vicious battle for the lucrative army contracts with nearby Fort Stanton. As the violence explodes around him, Jim becomes a helpless witness to cold-blooded murder and watches as Bill swears revenge and leads a gang of killers into the hills. However hard he tries, Jim can't escape the violence and is finally drawn into its bloody conclusion on the streets of Lincoln.

Howard is a lonely, geeky tenth-grader dealing with a father who's had some kind of breakdown, a flaky, overprotective mother and frightening waking dreams. Then he meets Cate, a strange girl who convinces him that he is an Adept, which means he can communicate through dreams with other dimensions and, under certain circumstances, travel between them. Howard discovers that our world is only one of several dimensions swirling in time and space, and that one of the others, peopled by unimaginably powerful monsters, is approaching Earth for the first time in millennia. The last time the dimensions coincided, our world was saved by the breaking of a powerful golden mask in the Chinese city of Sanxingdui. Together, Howard and Cate travel through time and space, meeting other Adepts and avoiding lurking monsters, in a quest to find the three fragments of the golden mask and prevent it from falling into the wrong hands.

Set during the last year of the American Civil War, Death on the Riverportrays the grim brutality of war through the eyes of a young soldier. After the older brother he worshipped is killed in battle, young Jake Clay joins the Union Army in the spring of 1864, determined to make his parents proud and honor his brother's death. His dreams of glory vanish, however, when he is wounded and taken prisoner in his first battle at Cold Harbor, Virginia, and confined to the Confederate prison camp at Andersonville, where 30,000 soldiers face violence, disease and starvation. Frightened and disillusioned, Jake takes up with Billy Sharp, an unscrupulous opportunist who shows him how to survive, no matter what the cost. By the war's end Jake's sleep is haunted by the ghosts of those who have died so he could live. When the camp is liberated, Jake and Billy head north on the Mississippi riverboatSultana, overcrowded far beyond its capacity. Unknown to Jake, the fateful journey up river will come closer to killing him than Andersonville did, but it will also provide him with his one chance at redemption. John Wilsonis the author of twenty-three books for juveniles, teens and adults. His self-described "addiction to history" has resulted in many award-winning novels that bring the past alive for young readers. Incredibly, even the worst of the horrors that Jake experiences inDeath on the Riveractually happened. John spends significant portions of the year traveling across the country speaking in schools, leaving his audiences excited about the past. John lives in Lantzville, British Columbia.

In his third young adult title, John Wilson takes on the rich territory of the 1845 Franklin expedition. Cabin boy David Young travels aboard the ill-fated vessel the HMS Erebus from London, England, en route to Canada's frozen and uncharted north, and his adventures comes to a modern-day Dave Young in Humboldt, Saskatchewan, in a series of dreams.

Steve's romantic trip is interrupted when he undertakes a mission to investigate what part his grandfather played in a bombing off the coast of Spain.

Sentenced to death for abandoning his unit, a soldier recounts the events leading up to his arrest.The reality of trench warfare is a shock to Allan McBride. Like many other young soldiers, he enthusiastically signed up for the chance to join the war effort and be a part of the fighting. But after months in the ravaged battlefields, watching men, including his friend Ken, get blown up by German shelling, something in Allan snaps and he leaves his unit, believing he is "walking home to Canada" to get help for his friend.After nearly a week of wandering aimlessly, Allan is taken in by a band of real deserters — men who have abandoned their units and live on the edge of survival in the woods of northern France. Once Allan realizes what he's done, he is paralyzed by the reality of his circumstance: if he stays with these men, it's possible they will be found and have to face the consequences; and if he returns to his unit, he will be charged with desertion...

A boy-friendly book set during World War One, published for the centennary of the war and accompanied by a digital component to boost interest from the school and library market. It's the early 1900s and Edward Setten is growing up in the prairies fascinated by his uncle, who is one of the very first people in Canada to pilot a plane. Despite his mother's protests, Edward learns to fly and, when war breaks out, joins the Royal Flying Corps. In this fast-paced and gripping novel, Edward's coming of age takes place in the most extraordinary of circumstances.

Fourteen-year-old Al is spending the summer on the shores of Ontario's James Bay with his eccentric archaeologist father. On their last day there, Al paddles his canoe awawy from the rocky, tree-lined shore and is strangely overtaken by a thickfog that disorients him. As the mist rolls over him, Al is startled to see a ship in the distance that he recognizes as the Discover, whose captain was the ill-fated Henry Hudson. Is it a ghostly apparition?

Sam and Annabel are visiting Drumheller, Alberta, where the farmland Sam’s mother lives on is host to a dinosaur dig. Annabel, an avid learner, is thrilled to have access to paleontologists and spends as much time as she can near the dig, much to Sam’s dismay. But when they learn the dig has uncovered scientifically important bones, even Sam’s interest is piqued. In fact, the whole town is talking about the dig. When Sam and Annabel learn that Humphrey Battleford, a famous collector of stolen goods, is in the area, they are on high alert to keep the ancient bones safe.**

Steve thinks a trip to Europe is out of the question—until he hears his grandfather's will. Suddenly he's off to Spain, armed with only a letter from his grandfather that sends him to a specific address in Barcelona. There he meets a girl named Laia and finds a trunk containing some of his grandfather's possessions, including a journal he kept during the time he fought with the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War. Steve decides to trace his grandfather's footsteps through Spain, and with Laia's help, he visits the battlefields and ruined towns that shaped his grandfather's young life, and begins to understand the power of history and the transformative nature of passion for a righteous cause.

A dramatic Arctic adventure set during Sir John Franklin's doomed search for the Northwest PassageGeorge Chambers is a fourteen-year-old aboard the HMS Erebus, one of two ships under the command of Sir John Franklin on his quest to discover the Northwest Passage. But when the Erebus and Terror are trapped in crushing ice, 129 men of the crew die from cold, scurvy, and starvation.Only two remain alive when George begins to recount his story: him and Commander James Fitzjames. As his strength dwindles and starvation weakens him, George recalls the events that led him to Canada's desolate North, and the expedition's failure — including gravediggers, a close call with a polar bear, standing up against sailors threatening mutiny, and his own impending death.George does not know whether the story he tells will be all that survives of Franklin's doomed Arctic expedition.