When eleven-year-old Gregor and his two-year-old sister are pulled into a strange underground world, they trigger an epic battle involving men, bats, rats, cockroaches, and spiders while on a quest foretold by ancient prophecy.

In his second adventure, eleven-year-old Gregor returns to the world beneath New York City to rescue his kidnapped sister, Boots, and fulfill a prophecy that will restore peace to the people, bats, rats, cockroaches, and spiders who populate the underworld.

"Discover Borneo's Gomantong Cave, where literally millions of bats, cockroaches, spiders, and rats coexist; in pitch darkness. Learn about mythical creatures like the Mongolian Death Worm; and scarily real ones like killer bees, which were accidentally created by scientists in the 1950s. Visit New Orleans' Beauregard-Keyes house, where Civil War soldiers are said to still clash in the front hall. Plus ghost stories from around the world, a cross-cultural...

A "middle-grade adaptation of Amy Stewart's Wicked Bugs that features profiles of the world's scariest, deadliest, and grossest bugs, from the most painful hornet to flies that transmit deadly diseases to millipedes that stop traffic, to 'bookworms' that devour libraries"--

Describes the anatomy, behavior, and habitat of various insects, including the beetle, moth, and cockroach.

"The toymaker who wants to create the perfect wife; the princess whose heart is won by words, not actions; the tiny dog whose confidence far outweighs his size; and the sinister Lacewing King who rules over the Silken Folk. These are just a few of the weird and wonderful creatures who populate Joanne Harris's first collection of fairy tales"--

"Engaging, unusual essays written over the last two decades, on matters literary, social, cultural, and personal--from the explosive date rape debates of the '90s to the ubiquitous political adultery of the '00s, from Anton Chekhov to Celine Dion. Here is Mary Gaitskill the essayist: witty, direct, penetrating to the core of each issue, personality, or literary trope (On Updike: "It is as if [he] has entered a tiny window marked 'Rabbit,' and, by...