One day sam's father says he has entered the night race to kawau island. But terry, the other crew member, fails to turn up for the race and then as the sun sets and the weather worsens, sam's father is knocked unconscious. So sam, her sister and her mother are left to sail the boat alone.

When you're the constant butt of everyone's jibes about your weight, shape and lack of sporting skill, it's hard to trust anyone who tells you that you have a talent. Told he has the makings of a great wrestler, Claude dismisses the idea. Then the past starts to catch up with him, his mum, and the mysterious, oddball new kid in town who's named after a legendary Australian wrestler.

Meet Alex Rider, the reluctant teenage spy. When his guardian dies in suspicious circumstances, fourteen-year-old Alex Rider finds his world turned upside down. Within days he's gone from schoolboy to superspy. Forcibly recruited into MI6, Alex has to take part in gruelling SAS training exercies. Then, armed with his own special set of secret gadgets, he's off on his first mission...

Twelve-year-old Tony has travelled all around New Zealand with his nomadic mother, and desperately wants somewhere to belong. When they arrive in Charleston, a gold-mining ghost town, he is almost afraid to hope this might finally be the place. But things aren't as they seem, and he finds himself caught up in mysterious events. Suggested level: intermediate, junior secondary.

Abandoned on the doorstep of an orphanage 12 years ago, Adam has no idea who, or where, his parents are. He has no friends, nothing he's good at, and nowhere he really belongs. Until the day he wins a competition: two days working with a reclusive software genius, and the chance to test-drive his latest top-secret breakthrough in computer game technology.

Rory loves fishing more than anything, but as the story opens he is involved in an incident that sees him overboard with a mako shark. The event changes him. Now he has a morbid fear of the water, and fishing doesn't have the same appeal. But when the school principal puts him in charge of a fundraising fishing competition, will Rory over come his fear?