"In the year 2044, reality is an ugly place. The only time teenage Wade Watts really feels alive is when he's jacked into the virtual utopia known as the Oasis. Wade's devoted his life to studying the puzzles hidden within this world's digital confines -- puzzles that are based on their creator's obsession with the pop culture of decades past and that promise massive power and fortune to whoever can unlock them. But when Wade stumbles upon the first...

Rumors spread that Tobias Hawthorne's lost son may still be alive, casting doubt on seventeen-year-old Avery's inheritance and changing the rules of the game.

"All the world is a puzzle, and Mike Brink--a celebrated and ingenious puzzle constructor--understands its patterns like no one else. Once a promising Midwestern football star, Brink was transformed by a traumatic brain injury that caused a rare medical condition: Acquired Savant Syndrome. The injury left him with a mental superpower--he can solve puzzles, calculate equations, and see patterns in ways ordinary people can't. But his condition has also...

Aubry Tourvel is 9 when she and her sisters, Pauline and Sylvie, stumble across a strange well in a courtyard secreted between empty apartment buildings. The well is made of smooth gray stone, and its opening has been carved to resemble a face. The siblings assume it's a wishing well, and because the papers are full of terrible news, each resolves to sacrifice something precious for the greater good. Pauline drops in a gold chain to stop the socialists...

Originally published in an anthology collection called "Night Visions", this long novella was the basis for the film "Hellraiser". Considered by many Barker fans to be among his best, the story introduces Pinhead, the leader of a group of hell-spawned demons called Cenobites, as he (it?) tries to secure the soul of Uncle Frank, who foolishly thought that he could arrive at the gateway to ultimate pleasure without traveling a path of grisly torture...

Back at the Winterhouse hotel for another holiday season, Elizabeth and Freddy, who love puzzles, dig deeper into the mystery surrounding a hotel guest who left behind odd artifacts, including a magical book that evil Gracella Winters once attempted to use to gain destructive power over the entire Falls lineage.

"Blythe Harmon is on the fast track to a life she never wanted. On her thirtieth birthday, just as she's about to lock herself into a high-powered job and accept a marriage proposal to match, an unusual bequest from her beloved late grandmother, Nomi, offers an escape and invitation to adventure. Equipped with Nomi's urn of ashes and a treasure map, Blythe sets off for a small island in the San Juans where she rents the mysterious and unsettling Improbable...

The new tenants have a terrible secret. So do the landlord and his daughter...Ever since Lucy was two, she's been on the run alongside her mother. She's never understood the reason for a lifetime of paranoia, aliases, and lies. All she understands are the rules: never lock eyes with strangers, never let down your guard, and always be ready to move on. Finally, after thirteen years and eleven states, their next hideaway seems perfect. An isolated,...

Six murders. One hundred pages. Millions of possible combinations...but only one is correct. Can you solve Torquemada's murder mystery? In 1934, the Observer's cryptic crossword compiler, Edward Powys Mathers (aka Torquemada), released a novel that was simultaneously a murder mystery and the most fiendishly difficult literary puzzle ever written. The pages have been printed in an entirely haphazard order, but it is possible--through logic and intelligent...

'Young puzzlers can help Bear and Friends on their hunt for a house, a scarf, a pet, and more missing items in these charming, easy-to-read stories with bonus matching activities."-- Page 4 of cover.