When Great-aunt Elsie Appelbaum leaves behind a lifetime of seemingly worthless objects including a patent apple peeler, everyone is disappointed except Tilda-next-door, who uses the items to build a flying machine....
Retreating from her friends, studies, parents, and the pressures of growing up, Phoebe Van der Clute skips school to escape her problems and is hurled by a mysterious force into the river, where she finds a mysterious chunk of clear glass....
A little girl frees her imaginary friend, a witch named Alice, from a secret cupboard and helps her brew a magic potion able to launch them both into the night sky on a quest for a polymorphous wizard....
"[A] probing, acutely observed novel about a girl's dangerous first liaison. Anna is only 15 when she falls in love with Thorn, a peot nearly twice her age, and begins a sexual affair . . . Readers will see that Thorn is a predator, pushing Anna int...