Here is a perfect Halloween adventure for you - book 3 in the Skulduggery Pleasant series, The Faceless Ones. If you haven’t read Skulduggery yet you’re missing something. Skulduggery Pleasant is a wise-cracking, classic car driving detective, an impeccable dresser…and a skeleton with magical abilities! With his 14 year-old detective in training sidekick Valkyrie Cain, he’s out to save the world from all kinds of vampires and and a slew of creepy villains bent on taking over the world.

In The Faceless Ones, Skulduggery and Valkyrie are working their beat following up on some mysterious murders. They are really undercover this time as they have been banned from working for the official police force and deemed dangerous “loose cannons.” (A “loose cannon” is someone who is unpredictable or reckless, a person whose behavior is believed to put the people around them in danger.  The phrase originates from heavy cannons that used to be secured to the decks of ships. If a cannon came loose and was able to slide around the deck on its own it endangered all of the sailors on the ship.)

Anyway, Skulduggery and Valkyrie ARE unconventional…and they DO bend the rules on occasion, so they find themselves working the case secretly. They’re good though, and they begin to piece together a plot by their arch enemies, the evil Diablerie, to bring back to our time the Faceless Ones, beings that will threaten life on earth as we know it if they are allowed to return.

Of course Skulduggery’s former boss thinks he’s a trouble maker and doesn’t believe him, or maybe he just doesn’t want to believe him, or maaaaybe he’s working for the bad guys. It takes a good detective to figure that out.  Skulduggery’s former boss is a lot like Cornelius Fudge actually, when Fudge doesn’t want to believe that Voldemort is back.

Skulduggery and Valkyrie have to call on all their friends, make some new friends and take some risks to rally a ragtag group that are willing to confront the Diablerie and keep the Faceless Ones from returning. Who to trust and who not to trust is a challenge this time around. Also, Skulduggery is not above making an alliance with someone he may or may not trust in different circumstances. To complicate matters, even some of Skulduggery’s close associates are beginning to question his judgement, mainly his judgement about the dangerous situations he puts Valkyrie in. She IS only fourteen. Why DOES Skulduggery train Valkyrie and what does he really want for her future? In this book, we find out more about Skulduggery’s past and what might motivate him as he continues to exist as an immortal skeleton.

Hand to hand combat, trying to weed out double crossers, following hunches, planning surveillance…it’s all here…plus the sarcasm and wise-cracking. Skulduggery and Valkyrie can dish it out as fast as they can take it.

I think you will enjoy these more if you start at the beginning and read them in order. There are a lot of characters and a whole different world to understand. Besides, all three are good! They are full of action and very funny. Dialogue like this that is truly funny is rare - don’t pass it up. Author: Derek Landy

• Watch Skulduggery Pleasant in 60 Seconds Video
• Listen to an Interview with Skulduggery Pleasant
• Listen to an Excerpt of The Facess Ones
• Look Inside The Faceless Ones
• Skulduggery Pleasant Official Website

Book 1: Scepter of the Ancients on CD or Downloadable Audiobook
Book 2: Playing with Fire on Downloadable Audiobook
Book 3: The Faceless Ones on Dowloadable Audiobook

Don’t miss the first two Skulduggery Pleasant books. And if you like the idea of a wise-cracking, unconventional team - try the Bartimaeus Trilogy beginning with The Amulet of Samarkand. It is the story of a magician’s apprentice and a sarcastic, wise-cracking genie. They also team up to save the world.

Live Webcast Today at 1:00pm PDT/4:00pm EDT (Indiana is 4:00pm) with Kate DiCamillo, author of The Magician’s Elephant. To listen to the webcast visit The Magician’s Elephant Official Website and click on the webcast button. You need to register first so give yourself some time. 

Peter is an orphan. Even though he is just a boy, he has a job taking care of an old soldier. Peter is supposed to be learning how to be a soldier, but mostly he is just being a servant boy to the soldier. Peter is sad and lonely.

One day on his way to buy some food, Peter impulsively spends his food money on a fortune-teller. The fortune-teller tells Peter that his little sister Adele is still alive and that an elephant will lead him to her. An elephant in the middle of winter! What nonsense! What a waste of money. And now Peter will go hungry as well.

But strange and magical things are about to happen. The very night that Peter visits the fortune-teller a magician is putting on a show. He makes an elephant, (an elephant!) appear out of thin air.

Can this miraculous elephant mean that Peter can have a miracle of his own? Is his sister really alive and can the elephant help him find her? Author: Kate DeCamillo

• Look Inside The Magician’s Elephant
• Read Chapter One The MAgician’s Elephant
• Listen to Chapter One The Magician’s Elephant
• The Magician’s Elephant Official Website
• Read an Interview with the Author: Kate DiCamillo
• Listen to an Interview with the Author: Kate DiCamillo

If you like the kind of story where a little bit of something magical helps people find happiness, try one of these:

Bran Hambric doesn’t know a thing about himself. He was found at age 6 locked in a bank vault in the town of Dunce. He has no memory of anything before being discovered in the vault. He’s being raised by the Wilomas family, only because Mr. Wilomas worked at the bank and is forced to obey the “Finders Keepers Law.” If you find it, you have to keep it, even if “it” is a kid.

In Dunce, magic is outlawed. When Bran is confronted by a gangly creature that actually knows his name, he knows something is up - something about his past. Something that has to do with magic. Clues lead Bran to a magical library, a mysterious girl, a bank employee that is much more than she seems and a gnome. Yeah, a gnome: short guy, long beard, tall red hat shaped like a cone. Together the new friends set out to uncover Bran’s past and confront the Farfield curse.

An orphan kid living in a house where the family treats him badly. The kid finds out he’s magic.  A bad guy wants the kid dead. Oh, and there’s a curse involving the kid. Sound familiar? I know it does. There are an awful lot of Harry Potter similarities…but even so, Bran Hambric is a fun story anyway. I would call it fan fiction. Fan fiction is fiction created by the admirer of a certain story or that story’s characters. Kaleb didn’t plagiarize, he just took some ideas and built his own story around them. There are enough original ideas to keep the story interesting. AND, he’s a teenage author - not too shabby. He says that there are more Bran Hambric stories coming. It will be fun to see where he goes with Bran’s story and how his writing matures. Author: Kaleb Nation

• Official Website Bran Hambric
• Bran Hambric The Farfield Curse on CD

More boys coming into their magical powers:

Nick Rostov lives in Las Vegas. His Dad is a magician and performs his show of mediocre tricks all over town. Nick’s actually a little embarrassed by it. But on his 13th birthday, Nick learns that he isn’t just the son of a marginally talented trickster…he’s actually descended from a long line of Russian magicians on his mother’s side of the family - the real kind. No illusions here just powerful, real magic.  Nick’s relatives “blend in” by doing a show in Las Vegas. The audience dcesn’t know it, but their show is the real deal.

Nick is invited to join his newfound family to learn about his talents and practice them in their Vegas show. He also begins to learn about his Russian heritage and try more new things than just magic, like beet soup and cavier (that’s fish eggs!).  During has magic lessons Nick finds out this his family members are known as “Magickeeprs.” Their job is to keep ancient magical objects safe from the evil “Shadowkeepers.”

It isn’t too long before the “Shadowkeepers” arrive and will stop at nothing to get an ancient hourglass that has the power to  stop time. Author: Erica Kirov

• Look inside Magickeepers: The Eternal Hourglass Book One
• Magickeepers Official Website

Like Nick, Molly Moon has a unique talent too - she can hypnotize people. And if you’re a mere mortal like the rest of us, try reading about the master magician Houdini, or even better, learn some magic skills of your own.

Calen is a magician’s apprentice. He runs errands for his mage master and studies his lessons and mostly tries to stay out of trouble. Learning magic isn’t quite as exciting as he hoped though, and frankly, he’s a little bored. He doesn’t want to just READ about magic, he wants to DO magic.

Princess Meglynn is also bored. The life of a princess isn’t as exciting as it might sound either. Meg is so bored, she’s taken to exploring the palace and grounds dressed as a servant girl. While out exploring, Meg stumbles upon a huge secret. It’s so huge Meg isn’t so sure how much longer she can keep it to herself.

The secret? Meg is keeping a baby dragon in a cave outside the palace grounds. The problem? The dragon is a puppy no more. It is growing at an alarming rate and sometime soon, it will be able to breath fire. And there’s something else, something strange about the dragon’s attachment to Meg. Sometimes when she’s in the castle, Meg can feel the dragon in her mind.

Meg figures a magician’s apprentice is just the person to help her figure out this weird attachment she has too her dragon. Calen figures this princess and her dragon is just the thing he needs to stop READING about magic and start DOING magic. What they don’t know, is that while they are spending time in the cave learning about the dragon and experimenting with some magic, there is a murderess traitor inside the palace walls.

The two friends and their dragon are about to get more excitement than any of them ever wished for. They have to learn to trust each other and what they’ve learned about the bonds between friends, even dragon friends, to save each other and the people they love.  Author: Michelle Knudsen

• Look Inside The Dragon of Trelian
• Read Chapter One The Dragon of Trelian

If you like this one, and you like reading about young magician finding his powers, try The Magic Thief. If it’s dragons you like, try The Dragons of Ordinary Farm or Timothy and the Dragon’s Gate or Fablehaven: Secrets of the Dragon Sanctuary.