Mal Peet

In an interview with a young journalist, World Cup hero, El Gato, describes his youth in the Brazilian rain forest and the events, experiences, and people that helped make him a great goalkeeper and renowned soccer star.

Paul Faustino, known as the best soccer journalist in the business, reluctantly investigates the disappearance of eighteen-year-old Ricardo, a soccer prodigy known as "El Brujito, " while in alternate chapters a slave in old San Juan becomes a powerful voodoo priest.

When her mother becomes too ill to harvest tea on the nearby plantation, Shenaz is too small to fill in, but when she tells the monkeys she has befriended why she is sad, they bring her a basket filled with rare and valuable wild tea.

Desert guide Issa finds the baby girl Mariama after a sandstorm, and raises her as his own daughter--until a young man and his protectors come seeking a guide for their dangerous journey through the Bitter Mountains.

How hard can it be to write a fantasy trilogy? When YA author Philip Murdstone's star starts to wane, his agent, the ruthless Minerva Cinch, convinces him that his only hope is to write a sword-and-sorcery blockbuster. Unfortunately, Philip is utterly unsuited to the task. In a dark hour, a dwarfish stranger comes to his rescue. But the deal he makes with Pocket Wellfair turns out to have Faustian consequences.

Yazul loves making kites with his grandfather, but all he truly desires is the approval of his father. Yazul's father, lord of a han along the Silk Road, is a man made stern by loneliness, and Yazul's love of kite-making only seems to elicit disappointment. "Travel and trade are what matters," his father says. But when the han is attacked by bandits, Yazul has an idea. With the help of his grandfather, he might just be able to use his kite-making...