New 'tweener' books by Stefan Bachmann, Jasper Fforde and Emily Fairlie are among the new titles

Stefan Bachmann's 'The Peculiar' centers on a brother and sister in an alternative Victorian England.

August 26, 2012


Books for tweens may get overshadowed by the enormous popularity of young-adult titles, but the category is still robust, as more bestselling authors of adult and teen books apply their talents to a younger audience.

Infinity Ring Book One: A Mutiny in Time

By James DashnerScholastic, 192 pp.: $12.99, for ages 8 and up

Three kids travel back through history to fix it and save the future in this kickoff to a new multimedia series that can be experienced as both a book and video game.


The Spindlers

By Lauren Oliver, illustrated by Iacopo Bruno. HarperCollins, 256 pp.: $16.99, for ages 8 and up

A young girl wakes up and discovers her brother is missing, forcing her to travel to an underworld populated with talking rats, music-loving moles and evil, spider-like beings known as the Spindlers who run this unusual kingdom.


The Peculiar

By Stefan BachmannGreenwillow Books, 384 pp.: $16.99, for ages 9 and up

A brother and sister becoming unwitting saviors of a city set in an alternative Victorian England where gnomes drive taxis, fairies live in slums and the birds are mechanical.


Who Could That Be at This Hour?

By Lemony SnicketLittle, Brown, 272 pp.: $15.99, for ages 9 and up

The first in a four-volume series about a young Lemony Snicket as he begins an apprenticeship in a secret organization, asks questions that shouldn't be asked, and writes an account of the ordeal that shouldn't be published, yet is.


The Last Dragonslayer

By Jasper FfordeHarcourt Houghton Mifflin, 296 pp.: $16.99, for ages age 12 and up

Magic has lost its allure for society until a teenage girl, who runs a magicians' employment agency, brings it back en vogue to prevent a dragon from destroying the world.


Splendors and Glooms

By Laura Amy SchlitzCandlewick, 400 pp.: $17.99, for ages 9 and up

A master puppeteer in Victorian England is suspected in a girl's disappearance in this gothic thriller from the Newbery Medalist.


The High Skies Adventures of Blue Jay the Pirate

By Scott NashCandlewick, 368 pp.: $17.99, for ages 8 and up

This beautifully illustrated novel tells the swashbuckling tale of pirate birds who sail the sky.


Third Grade Angels

By Jerry SpinelliArthur A. Levine, 112 pp.: $15.99, for ages 7 and up

A third-grader struggles with always been good in the prequel to the Newbery Medalist's "Fourth Grade Rats."



By Steve SheinkinFlash Point, 272 pp.: $19.99, for ages 10 and up

An edge-of-your-seat, nonfiction look at the race to build, and steal, the world's most dangerous weapon: the atomic bomb.


The Lost Treasure of Tuckernuck

By Emily Fairlie HarperCollins, 304 pp.: $16.99, for ages 8 and up

Sixth-graders Bud and Laurie use lists and notes as they the hunt for a treasure hidden by their eccentric school founder more than 80 years ago. Will they find it before the school is torn down?

The Great Unexpected

By Sharon Creech HarperCollins, 240 pp.: $16.99, for ages 8 and up

Newbery Medal winner Sharon Creech tells a story of two orphan girls, a boy named Finn who falls from a tree, and two sisters separated by an ocean--and how different worlds are connected in spite of the distance between them.