Twelve-year-old Max, who loves the legend Buelo tells him about a mythical gatekeeper who can guide brave travelers on a journey into tomorrow, sets out on a dangerous quest to discover if he is true of heart and what the future holds, armed with a treasured compass, a mysterious stone rubbing, and Buelo's legend as his only guides.

As a scholarship student at the prestigious Nithercott School, seventeen-year-old Ife feels like an outcast, but when a missing classmate reappears and acts strange, Ife teams up with two other students to investigate the school's decades-old legend of the Changing Man.

"In long ago China, a girl named Zhen Yu wanders away from her father at a busy market. A mysterious fortune teller helps Zhen Yu’s father find her, but also warns him that one day his daughter will be bitten by a snake on her wedding night. Years later, as Zhen Yu is dressing for her wedding, a knock comes on the door. Although it is her wedding day, she is not too busy to show kindness to a stranger. She opens the door, sticking her hairpin into...