New Releases by Barbara Brooks Wallace

Bathsheba, the sassy, clever cat who always accompanies Miss Switch everywhere she goes, now goes on an adventure of her own.

In her recent memoir, "Small Footsteps in the Land of the Dragon," award-winning children''s author Barbara "Bobbie" Wallace provides a captivating account of her childhood years in pre-WWII China. What a storyteller! What a life! Bobbie''s American father abandoned his fledgling career in films to sell lamp oil in China for Standard Oil. Good at what he did, he eventually became an executive for Standard Oil of China. At the tender age of sixteen, Bobbie''s Russian mother fled her revolution-torn homeland and came to stay with her Shanghai relatives. She entered the Harvard Medical School of China in the following year. After becoming a registered surgical nurse, she rose to become head nurse at Shanghai''s only sanitarium. The successes of her parents allowed Bobbie and her sister to grow up with "modern" comforts in a country where they were scarce. When you read her book will find that little Bobbie was a precocious observer. You will see sights she saw and hear sounds she heard in a series of vignettes. In them she relates a rainbow of childlike discoveries and insights. While her accounts are full of humor, they also convey her arm''s length awareness of the darker side of life in pre-war China. We love this book!!

Anderson "Andy" Wardell, nicknamed "Little Devil" by her Chinese servants, records eight months of her adventures in China and the United States.

Emily Luccock is looking forward to living at Sugar Hill Hall....She remembers her aunt and uncle''s grand old mansion well, with its enormous, elegant parlor, marble fireplace, and white china cups filled with hot chocolate. But this time things are different. Her aunt''s once bright and lively home is now dead with silence. Evil lurks in every corner, and the dark, shadowed walls watch and whisper late at night. And no one ever speaks. Everything''s changed at Sugar Hill Hall, and Emily knows something awful is happening there. What''s become of Uncle Twice? Why is Aunt Twice a prisoner in her own home? Emily is desperate to uncover the truth. Time is running out, and she must find a way to save the people and home she cares so much about.

Oliver Twister discovers a dragon named Bob living in the Twister garage. Bob has the pleasant smell of cinnamon and nutmeg rather than a swamp or old rubber galoshes, and he needs Oliver to help him do good deeds.

One flight up the narrow, steep stairs, Robin finds himself swallowed up by the darkness, terrified and hating the thought of the misery and fear his knock will bring to the wretched families who huddle behind every door in the building. Thus begins the story set in a grim tenement district of New York City before the turn of the twentieth century. It is there that Robin, once protected by a loving mother and father, both now dead, must contend with a brutal stepfather, Hawker Doak. Yet Robin is faced with only two choices: remain in the ruthless charge of Hawker, collecting the hated rents, and, perhaps worse, being sent to work in a factory or escape into the treacherous slum streets, haunted by, among other horrors, the bullying boys who work and live in the streets, and whom Robin so fears. Either choice provides a sure recipe for a very short life. But in the end it is fear for the life of his baby brother that makes Robin''s agonizing decision for him. The answer to whether or not they survive will only be found when Robin discovers the secret guarded by a place called St. Something. Within this true picture of tenement life, Barbara Brooks Wallace has created another chilling mystery that starts with one kind of terror, only to weave its way into yet another, deepened by intrigue and unspeakable treachery.

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A scientifically-minded fifth grader finds himself in a frightening predicament when he proves that his teacher is a witch.

In the same dramatic and exciting style of her other Victorian mysteries, Wallace tells the story of 11-year-old Jenny, who arrives from China at her grandfather''s Graymark House. No one recognizes her, so, taking the job of a maid, Jenny must figure out what is going on within the dark hallways. A 2001 Edgar Award nominee.

What''s a skunk to do when he finds himself encased in a cardboard box, surrounded by possible enemies, and with his "weapon" taken from him? Luckily he is simply surrounded by the friendly Patch family animals — a cat, two dogs, a goat, and a duck. But Palmer thinks they''re all just foolish backyard pets whose blind trust in humans is sure to be betrayed. When the animals hear they are to be "farmed out" and separated, Palmer lears the meaning of true friendship. "Enthusiastic affection for animals overflows in Wallace''s warm story."—ALA Booklist

Colin Trevelyan, newly orphaned heir to his parents'' fortune, is kidnapped in the night from his ancestral home and taken to the grim Broggin Home for Boys, where he is underfed, overworked, and destined for a short life in a deadly glass factory. This story "immediately hooks readers, who will gobble up this satisfying fare," says "School Library Journal," "Fully realized Victorian melodrama that would make Dickens proud," says "The Bulletin of the Center for Children''s Books," A "Junior Literary Guild" selection and winner of the "Mystery Writers of America" EDGAR Award.

A young orphan, afraid of being sent to the workhouse, finds himself at the mercy of the unsavory owner of a tavern in Alexandria, Virginia, while he tries to solve the mystery surrounding his past and a missing twin.