Heresy, murder, and the contents of a mysterious treasure chest challenge Brother Cadfael - 12th-century herbalist, sleuth, and sometime cupid - in his 16th chronicle. In the summer of 1143, William of Lythwood arrives at the Benedictine Abbey of St. Peter and St. Paul, but it is not a joyous occasion - he's come back from his pilgrimage in a coffin. William's body is accompanied by his young attendant Elave, whose mission is to secure a burial place...

The wife of a landscape designer in Pennsylvania obtains a job doing housework for an old woman who quilts, and in the process learns to quilt herself. As the two quilt, the old one recounts her family's tragic story.

In this story loosely based on the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale, seventeen-year-old Rose, a healer's apprentice, falls in love with the betrothed Lord Hamlin, who is seeking the sorcerer who cursed his future bride.

The Messenger of Fear brings justice to those who do wrong, creating frightening games where the players earn their redemption--or lose their sanity--and somehow Mara, fifteen, has become his apprentice.

When Ludlow Fitch runs away from his thieving parents in the City, he meets up with the mysterious Joe Zabbidou, who calls himself a secret pawnbroker, and who takes Ludlow as an apprentice to record the confessions of the townspeople of Pagus Parvus, where resentments are many and trust is scarce.

Sixteen-year-old Kai, a magician's apprentice and former street tough, must travel to the Phoenix Empire, where his friend Princess Lian is studying statecraft, and help her escape so she can return home before her father, the king, dies.

Journeyman toymaker Stefan Drosselmeyer is recruited by his mysterious cousin, Christian, to find a mythical nut that will save Boldavia's princess and his own kidnapped father from a fanatical Mouse Queen and her seven-headed Mouse Prince, who have sworn to destroy the Drosselmeyer family.

"The warrior cat Clans have enjoyed many moons of peace and prosperity -- but a dark season approaches, and those days will soon be over. Guided by a mysterious vision, the young apprentice Alderpaw of ThunderClan must go on a dangerous journey ... a journey that may be the Clans' only hope." --

Gathered round the fire at the Maypole Inn, in the village of Chigwell, on a foul weather evening in the year 1775 were John Willet, proprietor of the Maypole, and his three cronies. One of the three, Soloman Daisy, tells a stranger at the inn a well-known local tale of the murder of Reuben Haredale which had occurred 22 years ago that very day. Reuben had been owner of the Warren, an estate in the area, now the residence of the deceased Reuben's...

With evil Prince Nightshade hot on their trail, Alastair Grim and his apprentice Grubb and the rest of the crew of the unique mechanical/magical apparatus known as the Odditorium embark on a perilous underwater adventure to the otherworldly realm of Avalon, to find the legendary sword Excalibur, the only weapon capable of penetrating the prince's magical suit of armor.