"Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit who enjoys a comfortable, unambitious life...But his contentment is disturbed when the wizard Gandalf and a company of dwarves arrive on his doorstep...They have launched a plot to raid the treasure hoard guarded by Smaug the Magnificent, a large and very dangerous dragon. Bilbo reluctantly joins their quest, unaware that...he will encounter both a magic ring and a frightening creature known as Gollum"--P. [4] of cover.

For most of the last hundred years, Biloxi was known for its beaches, resorts, and seafood industry. But it had a darker side. It was also notorious for corruption and vice, everything from gambling, prostitution, bootleg liquor, and drugs to contract killings. The vice was controlled by small cabal of mobsters, many of them rumored to be members of the Dixie Mafia. Keith Rudy and Hugh Malco grew up in Biloxi in the sixties and were childhood friends,...

"For Harry's second year at Hogwarts, fresh torments and horrors arise, including an outrageously stuck-up new professor and a spirit who haunts the girls' bathroom. But then real trouble begins--someone is turning Hogwarts students to stone. Could it be Draco Malfoy, a more poisonous rival than ever? Could it possibly be Hagrid, whose mysterious past is finally told? Or could it be the one everyone at Hogwarts most suspects ... Harry Potter himself?"--P....

Publisher Annotation: For twelve long years, the dread fortress of Azkaban held an infamous prisoner named Sirius Black. Convicted of killing thirteen people with a single curse, he was said to be the heir apparent to the Dark Lord, Voldemort. Now he has escaped, leaving only two clues as to where he might be headed: Harry Potter's defeat of You-Know-Who was Black's downfall as well. And the Azkaban guards heard Black muttering in his sleep, "He's...

"April Clarke-Cliveden was the first person Hannah Jones met at Oxford. Vivacious, bright, occasionally vicious, and the ultimate It girl, she quickly pulled Hannah into her dazzling orbit. Together, they developed a group of devoted and inseparable friends-Will, Hugh, Ryan, and Emily-during their first term. By the end of the second, April was dead. Now, a decade later, Hannah and Will are expecting their first child, and the man convicted of killing...

Living in rural Virginia, ten-year-old Jess and Leslie become special friends as they create a magical secret world that they call Terabithia. But when a tragic accident causes Leslie's death during a storm, Jess is forced to face life alone. "This Newbery Medal-winning novel by bestselling-author Katherine Paterson has been a modern classic about friendship and loss for forty years. Jess Aarons has been practicing all summer so he can be the fastest...

When Ivan, a gorilla who has lived for years in a down-and-out circus-themed mall, meets Ruby, a baby elephant that has been added to the mall, he decides that he must find her a better life.

Danny's on the town with a real live dinosaur. From the ballpark to the zoo, these two are having one hundred million years of fun--all in on day!

During one of his several adventurous voyages in the 1600's, an Englishman becomes the sole survivor of a shipwreck and lives for nearly thirty years on a deserted island.