Roderick Townley – författare

It was only one shoe. It fit no one. But everyone wanted it. Hap Barlo sits in a cell, wondering how it had all gone so wrong. The blue shoe was ruined, the girl he’d been trying to help was missing, and he’d been branded a thief—again! He would be banished to the far side of Mount Xexnax in the morning. On the bright side, now he might be able to rescue his father, who had been banished last year. No one has ever returned from Xexnax, so perhaps Hap is a tad optimistic to be dreaming of rescue. Then again, perhaps a dreamer, a doer, and a thief is just the kind of boy who could challenge this mountain—and win! First edition will be printed in blue ink!From the Hardcover edition.

At the mid point of three towns, in the center of three streams, in the heart of a forest, lies a mysterious island. Encircled by quicksand and sewn shut by vines, it is impenetrable to all but the poisonous snakes patrolling its waters. But Daniel is determined to get there, along with his friend Emily.Emily is a bit mysterious herself. A girl who seems to know more than she can say, whose mother was taken away by government troops, and whose eccentric grandmother reads the future in her bubble bath.Enter the soldiers. Their menacing commander is terribly interested in sleepy little Everwood. Is he searching for something? A treasure map? The island? The girl? Roderick Townley spins a magical tale of lies and truths, of secrets kept and secrets revealed. Sooner or later, we all must step through the door in the forest.From the Hardcover edition.

A deliciously quirky tale of secrets, magic, and illusions.   Everything is in place: the packed theater, the Amazing Thummel, and, center stage, the magician''s mysterious assistant. Some have called her the most beautiful woman in Europe.Then, in a swirl of light, she vanishes!An astounding illusion, but she never reappears. All that remains are a bloodstained white scarf and her daughter, Cisley, who lives in a glass castle and walks her pet lobster each morning by the sea.Enter Cole, a rambunctious boy from town and Cisley''s first true friend. Together they hunt for clues to her mother''s disappearance. They puzzle over broken mirrors, ever-shifting labyrinths, a closet full of whispering ball gowns, and a fatal quest for a pure black rose.Roderic Townley spins a deliciously spooky tale of one girl''s journey to discover what''s real and what is simply an illusion.From the Hardcover edition.

The inhabitants of the storybook world of The Great Good Thing are a bit bored - not much has happened since their adventures on the internet (in Into the Labyrinth). But more danger than they've ever faced arrives when the book is stowed away on a space shuttle embarking on a four-year mission to Jupiter. At first the main difficulty is adjusting to life in zero gravity, but when the shuttle misses its re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere, Sylvie and her friends must find a way to help the astronauts survive the additional four years in space. The solution comes in the form of ice collected from one of Jupiter's moons - melting and evaporating the ice provides enough oxygen to sustain the shuttle crew, but it also contains a compound that reverses the ageing process. Soon, the astronauts are only children, and their own lives, and the fate of the characters in the book, lie in the hands of Sylvie, who must reach into their dreams to help them make it back to Earth alive.

How do you avenge -- or forgive -- your own murder four hundred years after it happened? Prompted by recurrent dreams, sixteen-year-old Dana Landgrave uncovers an ancient crime that has drawn the same souls together through three lifetimes. There's nothing sinister about the girl's sunlit twenty-first-century American life in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Yet, centuries ago, terrible things were done -- by someone she knows! Could it be her easygoing, easy-to-look-at boyfriend, Chase? Or her younger brother, Ben, who has been confined to a wheelchair since a school bus accident? What about Gianna, her inscrutable enemy on the yearbook staff? Or her eccentric psychotherapist, Dr. Sprague? As Dana summons courage to reenter the past, each incarnation propels her to new discoveries -- and new suspicions -- until the threads of all three lives converge in a devastating revelation.

Alec Schuyler has two immediate problems: what to do with the rest of his life, and what to do about Suze Matheson. She's his date for the Winter Dance. And she's got trouble of her own. The English teacher, Mr. "Call me Mark" Truscott, has made a move on her, a move which Sky has witnessed from his hiding place in a coat closet.Fifteen-year-old Sky is not one for making scenes -- or even speaking up. Instead he speaks through his music, his jazz piano. This novel, in three sets and an encore, plays all the chords and paradiddles of Sky's life -- at the moment, the life of a runaway in New York City, 1959. So how come he's hiding in a tenth-grade homeroom coat closet? Since his mother died, Sky and his father have had their umpteenth fight about the future. Like many a kid, Sky must leave home to get home. For him it's the world of Beat poetry and cool jazz. Along the way, he discovers an unexpected guide -- a blind musician who shows Sky how to see -- and learns what he has to lose to gain his own voice.

A storybook princess breaks the fourth wall and incites a new kind of adventure in this imaginative middle grade fantasy perfect for fans of Chris Colfer and Gail Carson Levine. Sylvie had an amazing life, but she didn’t get to live it very often. Sylvie has been a twelve-year-old princess for more than eighty years, ever since the book she lives in was first printed. She’s the heroine, and her story is exciting. But that’s the trouble: it’s always exciting in the same way. So when a new Reader opens the book at long last, Sylvie breaks the cardinal rule of all storybook characters: she looks up. And sets into motion a new story all her own. Now, Sylvie is in for an adventure beyond any she could have imagined. As her journey takes her from the pages of a book to the landscape of dreams, Sylvie must summon all her courage to save her kingdom, find her way home, and figure out what it really means to do a Great Good Thing.