The best crocodile books

Enjoy learning the alphabet and the natural world of birds via simple and colorful graphic illustrations. Each letter has a corresponding bird from the well-known C for Cardinal to the more exotic L for Lapwing. Children and parents will discover a wondrous array of birds from A to Z (yes, including X and U!).

This Is Not My Home is a reverse immigration story about a little girl named Lily who is forced to move back to Taiwan. Told eloquently in panels and very few words, we follow this angry girl through the streets of her new and unfamiliar environment. She despises the food, squats in distaste at the toilet, and feels overwhelmed by the language. Though it takes a bit of time, Lily begins to realize what home means to not just her, but those around her as well.

Already struggling to juggle co-running the local pub along with caring for her orphaned niece, Judi Westerholme does not need her life to become any more complicated. Just as she starts receiving threatening, late-night phone calls, she discovers one of her employees, Kate, shot dead. Are they connected?

Judi finds herself caught up in a murder investigation, as well as the hunt for Kate's fourteen-year-old daughter, who has gone missing. Add in the uncertainty of her relationship with Melbourne-based D.S. Heath and the fact that her estranged mother's nursing home keeps urging her to visit, and Judi might finally be at breaking point.

In the city of Edriast, there is no deadlier duty than to serve as the Shadow. As the personal servant of the powerful Lord Rennard, the Shadow’s life is all but forfeit. Rennard possesses one of five rare and dangerous Relics – a jewel that protects his bloodline, but slowly poisons everyone else in its proximity. When the current Shadow succumbs to its magic, nineteen-year-old blacksmith Kaylan is summoned to take his place. It’s an appointment that will kill her. As the time Kaylan has left ebbs away, hope begins to fade… That is, until she discovers a plot to destroy all five bloodlines in possession of the Relics.

Relic is the absorbing first novel in The Relic Trilogy, a thrillingly dark YA fantasy series.

Shiver the Whole Night Through is a YA novel, blending mystery and horror, about a bullied Irish youngster drawn into a dream world of magic, desire, hope, and revenge. After months of harassment and romantic heartbreak, seventeen-year-old Aidan Flood feels ready to end it all. 

But when he learns that local girl Sláine McAuley actually has, he discovers a new sense of purpose and becomes determined to find out what happened to her. Aidan isn’t sure if beautiful Sláine is a ghost, a demon, or the figment of his imagination. The weather is turning colder, an ancient evil has awoken – and it might just be the death of them all.

When I was in high school I was a smart kid, a reader, and I lived in a welfare rooming house in Florida. I worked in a grocery store. I had great friends and I led a fast life. I graduated and moved to St. Croix in the Virgin Islands. To make money on the side I sold drugs. Then I joined a team of British smugglers and sailed a yacht with a ton of hashish to new york city. It was a glorious sailing adventure.

But it didn’t work out as well as I had imagined I wanted it to, however. I was caught and I was given six years in prison. This book is my personal story about how reading books saved my life…and how I became a writer.

Warwick “War” Pike is the captain and leader of a crew of modern pirates who operate on the Great Lakes and work for the Italian mob in Chicago. War doesn’t have rules for his crew—lie, maim, steal, do whatever it takes. Except take hostages. When the crew tries to take a cargo vessel on Lake Michigan, he ends up on the wrong end of a shotgun held by the beautiful and feisty redheaded captain—Grace Albright. When War realizes Grace has alerted the Coast Guard, he’s forced to take her with them. Now that Grace is deep in their lair, she’s starting to realize all is not as it appears. Warwick isn’t just a barbaric criminal; there’s something more underneath the surface. Now, her life isn’t the only thing in danger. So is her heart.

Ten-year-old Rosario Ramirez and her family are political refugees from Mexico, trying to make a new life in Canada. After being teased at school, Rosario vows not to speak English again until she can speak with an accent that’s one hundred percent Canadian. Since she and her parents plan to spend the whole summer working on BC fruit farms, she will be surrounded by Spanish speakers again. But when her family’s closest friend Jose gets terribly sick, Rosario’s plans start to unravel. Neither Jose nor Rosario’s parents speak English well enough to get him the help he needs. Like it or not, Rosario must face her fears about letting her voice be heard.