James Langton

"Brighton, 1950. The body of a girl is found cut into three pieces. Detective Inspector Edgar Stephens is convinced the killer is mimicking a famous magic trick--the Zig Zag Girl. The inventor of the trick, Max Mephisto, is an old war friend of Edgar's. They served together in a shadowy unit called the Magic Men, a special ops troop that used stage tricks to confound the enemy. Max is on the traveling show circuit, touring seaside towns with ventriloquists,...

The fourth book of the Prydain cycle tells of the adventures that befell Taran when he went in search of his birthright and the truth about himself. Since The Book of Three was first published in 1964, young readers have been enthralled by the adventures of Taran the Assistant Pig-keeper and his quest to become a hero. Taran is joined by an engaging cast of characters that includes Eilonwy, the strong-willed and sharp-tongued princess Fflewddur Fflam,...

As the Wanteds, Unwanteds, and Necessaries struggle to adjust to changes in their society, Mr. Today begins training fourteen-year-old Alex to replace him as Artime's leader one day while Alex's disgraced twin, Aaron, connives to take over Quill.

In the first book of the chronicles of Prydain, Taran, Assistant Pig-Keeper at Caer Dallben, searches for the oracular pig Hen Wen while the forces of evil gather.

London, 1853: Having earned some renown by solving a case that baffled Scotland Yard, young Charles Lenox is called upon by the Duke of Dorset, one of England's most revered noblemen, for help. A painting of the Duke's great-grandfather has been stolen from his private study. But the Duke's concern is not for his ancestor's portrait; hiding in plain sight nearby is another painting of infinitely more value, one that holds the key to one of the country's...

A collection of short stories featuring a cross-section of society including runaways, drifters, gold miners, counterfeiters, attorneys, and slaves from Puritan Massachusetts and revolutionary New Jersey to antebellum Louisiana.

Three young men are entrusted with the Imaginarium Geographica, an atlas of fantastical places to which they travel in hopes of defeating the Winter King, whose bid for power is related to the First World War raging in the Real World.

"In the 1930s, as official government expeditions set their sights on conquering Mount Everest, a little-known World War I veteran named Maurice Wilson conceives his own crazy, beautiful plan: he will fly a plane from England to Everest, crash-land on its lower slopes, then become the first person to reach its summit--all utterly alone. Wilson doesn't know how to climb. He barely knows how to fly. But he has the right plane, the right equipment, and...

Chronicles the sojourn of journalist-explorer Henry Stanley; his wife, the painter Dorothy Tennant; and Mark Twain, Stanley's longtime friend, as they head for Cuba in search of Stanley's father.

Juvenile fiction. Adolescence. This is the second of five chronicles of Prydain in which Taran, the assistant-pig-keeper, longs to enter the world of men, but when he achieves his desire, he finds there is treachery as well as friendship.