Great Books

Glaciers! Snow monsters! Derflootle! The twins are about to get iced.Edgar and Ellen's pursuit of their nemesis, Stephanie Knightleigh, leads them to Frøsthaven, an Arctic village whose cheerful citizens and strange customs remind them of home. What makes this place a sugary sweet duplicate of Nod's Limbs? The secret, alas, is upon the forbidden slopes of the Glöggenheim, where dwells something that doesn't take kindly to being disturbed.

Lo! A mad experience resumes!Things have changed for Edgar and Ellen. With Augustus Nod back from the dead and the Knightleighs in disgrace, the good citizens of Nod's Limbs don't merely tolerate pranking, they embrace it. They've even made the troublesome twins local heroes. Great, right?Well, maybe not. Edgar and Ellen could be losing their edge just when they need it most. The outcome of the first-ever Nod's Limbs Knightleigh-less mayoral election is in their hands...and perhaps of slightly greater importance, the future of the planet. Humanity's safety rests in the secret of the balm, which may have just fallen into the wrong hands. Is it the twins' old nemesis, The Mason? Or the mysterious Man in the Paper Bag Mask? Or someone even more frightening?

Where tourists are the toast of the town.The Nod's Limbs Junkyard -- also known as the Gadget Graveyard -- is where Edgar and Ellen scavenge essential parts for their nefarious plots. So when Mayor Knightleigh announces plans to build a luxury hotel on the site, the twins spring into action.The mayor has invited a group of celebrities to Nod's Limbs for the first annual French Toast Festival, but the twins are concocting a scheme to send potential tourists screaming in the opposite direction. Can Edgar and Ellen get sweet revenge and save the Gadget Graveyard?

The scheming, spiteful little antiheroes of Rare Beasts--terrible twins Edgar and Ellen, a sort of Pugsley and Wednesday Addams duo--return for a second book in Charles Ogden's goth-themed, tongue-in-cheek series. Tourist Trap begins as Edgar and Ellen revel in their gloriously sinister home and the nearby "Gadget Graveyard," ripe with possibilities for misanthropic mischief. But the twins' beloved junkyard--and even their towering, mansion home--might be threatened by the pretentious plans of pompous Mayor Knightleigh, who hopes to get the town of Nod's Limbs on the National Registry of Historic Treasures. Edgar and Ellen, of course, immediately set out to thwart the mayor's plans by sabotaging a visiting tour of VIPs with monster attacks, insect sandwiches, and even a devilishly clever scheme involving the biggest piece of French toast in the universe. The fun format--forty-four short chapters, interspersed with Rick Carton's creepily cool pen-and-ink illustrations--makes for a quick read, and while the while the book never quite reaches Lemony Snicket levels of genius, kids will still love the many jokes and the twins' escalating, Grinch-style meanness (which, thankfully, never gets too mean). Watch for a third installment, Under Town. (Ages 9 to 12) --Paul Hughes

Step up! Step up! Step up and see such acts of awe and oddity! A bizarre circus creeps into Nod's Limbs in the dead of night, bringing with it caravans of strange and wonderful entertainers. Edgar and Ellen soon find kindred spirits among the fire-eaters and escape artists. But will the mischievous twins join the circus when it leaves town, and so avoid the wrath of Heimertz? In this topsy-turvy world of smoke and mirrors, nothing is quite what it seems....

Two heads are better than one...With nothing less than the future of humanity at stake, it's up to Edgar and Ellen to thwart Stephanie Knightleigh's dastardly scheme to raid all the world's balm springs -- even if it means separating for the first time in their lives. Edgar's pursuit of the Midway Irregulars leads him to the forests of Cougar Falls and an unlikely partnership with an eccentric professional monster hunter, while Ellen and Pet find themselves in the decidedly inhospitable town of Lach Lufless.But can Edgar survive without Ellen's quick wits? Can Ellen survive without Edgar's satchel of tricks? And can either of them survive when their most important allies have become deadly enemies?

Can the twins solve six mad riddles to find Nod's long-lost gold?It's all-out war with the Knightleigh family, and Edgar and Ellen are rapidly losing ground. But then everyone's attention is diverted by the ghostly hand of fortune: Augustus Nod has launched a treasure hunt from beyond the grave! The race is on, and the twins must solve the riddles and discover Nod's lost golden limbs before the Knightleighs bury the past -- and the diabolical duo with it!

Fire ants. Fraud. Footie pajamas.Twins Edgar and Ellen live alone -- their parents disappeared years ago, and who can blame them? -- in the quaint, little town of Nod's Limbs, in a grim, gray house overlooking the cemetery and the junkyard. They spend their days avoiding Heimertz, the mysterious accordion-playing caretaker; pestering Pet, a hairy, one-eyed creature of indeterminate species and gender; and wreaking havoc on the hapless citizens of Nod's Limbs.But wreaking havoc can incur expenses, so the twins come up with a unique fund-raising scheme: They'll nab the pets of Nod's Limbs and transform them into exotic animals they can sell for big bucks. Not a bad plan, if one of the purloined pets wasn't a lethargic python with a raging appetite....

Young twins Edgar and Ellen make the Grinch look positively benevolent. Living alone in a spooky house in the town of Nod's Limbs (their parents are on an extended around-the-world holiday), the bug-eyed, matted-haired, disturbingly pale siblings amuse themselves by plotting dreadful schemes to torture the townspeople. Inspired by a TV show about the value of exotic animals, they decide to steal all the local pets, decorate them with old Christmas ornaments (Grinchy enough for ye?), and sell them at market price. If they became very rich from the proceeds, they could spray the soccer fields with fizzy cola from a hang glider, or erect a giant windmill to blow manure all over town, or buy a whole carnival and not let anyone else enjoy the games and rides! As they skulk around Nod's Limbs with giant sacks, they find it surprisingly easy to snatch puppies, kittens, bunnies, hamsters, and even a Burmese python. Let the basement transformation to Uggprons and Snifflepops begin! They lull themselves to sleep that night with the sound of weeping children mourning the loss of their beloved pets, "a steady, groaning noise rising up from the world outside." It seems that fans of the comic-goth genre (Lemony Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events and Holly Black's Spiderwick Chronicles) have another series in which to wallow, this time where the child protagonists are not victims but predators. Rick Carton's funny, artful pen-and-ink illustrations perfectly capture the Addams family feel of the story, from the pleading eyes of the neighborhood pets in the darkness of the "exotic animal emporium" cart to the tiny Turkle boys crawling through sewer pipes in the desperate search for their pet. (Ages 8 and older) --Karin Snelson