7th Grade
A Tale Dark and Grimm
Reading Level: Grades 5-8
Gidwitz chronicles Hansel and Gretel's adventures through some of the Grimm Brothers most blood-thirsty stories in this hilarious, terrifying fairy tale send-up.
Karma
Reading Level: Grades 7+
The year is 1984. Fifteen year old Maya packs a suitcase for a trip to India with her father. They are going to lay Maya's recently deceased Hindu mother to rest. Not long after they arrive, however, tumultuous religious differences between the Sikhs and Hindus explode into violence when prime minister Indira Gandhi is assassinated.
Death Cloud
Reading Level: Grades 6-9
14-year-old Sherlock Holmes is thrust into a deadly adventure when he is sent to live with eccentric relatives during the school holidays
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Other engrossing Holmesian spin-offs include:
The Things a Brother Knows
Reading Level: Grade 7-9
After Ever After
Reading Level: Grades 6-8
The Ring of Solomon
Reading Level: Grades 6-8
The Bartimeaus trilogy chronicled the demon's misadventures while under the control of an 11-year-old magician. In this prequel Stroud shares one of the djinni's earlier adventures as the very reluctant slave of the evil Khaba, an ambitions magician in the court of King Solomon who rules Jerusalem with the help of the powerful slave of the ring.
The Gardener
Reading Level: Grades 7-10
High school sophomore Mason has a fairly normal life, if you discount the ugly scar marring half of his hulky face; if you discount the disappearance of his father and his mother's drinking habit and tendency to require Mason to be her parent and not vice versa.
Gorgeous
Reading Level: Grades 7-9
14-year-old Allison feels like the boring filling in a beauty sandwich. Her blonde, perfect, talented older sister can do no wrong while in their parents eyes and Allison's younger sister is everybody's darling. Allison only gets her parents' attention when she is in trouble (which usually isn't her fault).
The Twin's Daughter
Reading Level: Grades 7+
When the doorbell rings one day at the Sexton household, thirteen year old Lucy answers it herself, grumbling that her household servants never do much around the house. Standing on the doorstep is her mother, dirty, disheveled, and looking wholly not herself. But the woman is not her mother.

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