After Panama's tropical diseases and torrential rains kill thousands and stifle progress, the French and their Suez Canal champion Ferdinand de Lesseps flee the isthmus in defeat. Soon John Stevens--tenacious Great Northern Railroad builder--jumpstarts U.S. efforts. Making the conquest of malaria and yellow fever his first priority, Stevens helps Dr. William Gorgas eradicate disease-carrying mosquitoes. To remove dirt faster than mudslides can refill...

Ed Kennedy is a nineteen-year-old cab driver who doesn't think much of his life. He inadvertently helps stop a bank robbery, and that is when his life starts to change. He begins to receive mysterious messages that instruct him to go to addresses where people need help. Ed becomes the messenger, but who is behind the messages? Meet Ed Kennedy - underage cabdriver, pathetic cardplayer, and useless at romance. He lives in a shack with his coffee-addicted...

Doctor De Soto, a mouse dentist, copes with the toothaches of various animals except those who have a taste for mice, until the day a fox comes to him in great pain.

Determined to make a name for themselves, three adopted sisters living in London train for the ballet and the stage and in the process discover that each has a special talent.

Cubby Green is a bestselling novelist who gets a vicious and inaccurate review from seldom seen critic Shearman Waxx. Cubby finds out where Waxx has lunch and soon finds himself in a desperate struggle with a relentless sociopath, facing an inexorable assault on far more than his life.

A fifth-grader starts a newspaper with an editorial that prompts her burnt-out classroom teacher to really begin teaching again, but he is later threatened with disciplinary action as a result.

After celebrating their first nine same-day birthdays together, Amanda and Leo, having fallen out on their tenth and not speaking to each other for the last year, prepare to celebrate their eleventh birthday separately but peculiar things begin to happen as the day of their birthday begins to repeat itself over and over again.

A boy and a talking horse share an adventurous and dangerous journey to Narnia to warn of invading barbarians.

"It's Nanette's first trip to get the baguette! Is she set? You bet!"--