Secret Box

The Secret Box is a Junior Library Guild selection and the first in an irresistible middle grade series that will delight fans of Dan Gutman, Wendy Mass, and Trenton Lee Stewart. What starts as a fun quest to open a mysterious birthday present quickly turns crazy and dangerous when Jax and her cousin Ethan discover themselves at the center of a special magical legacy. Soon they realize the secret box was not intended as a gift, but as call for help that they alone can answer. Readers will love the page-turning mystery, hilarious girl and boy narrators, and clever incorporation of mythology-and lingering questions will leave them eager for more.

The Secret Cipher is the sequel to The Secret Box, a rollicking adventure full of family rivalry, magic, questing, and laugh-out-loud humor that's perfect for fans of Dan Gutman, Wendy Mass, and Trenton Lee Stewart. Jax Malone and her cousin Ethan Hoche were not expecting one of Jax's birthday presents to contain a dangerous magical object from a mythical past: an urn with the dark power to suck hope out of the world. Though the first urn is safely hidden, there are two more urns that could rid humanity of both faith and love. And powerful enemies who want to find them and use them to control the world. Now, even though they were never meant to open the present and discover its secret, Jax and Ethan must race to find and destroy the two remaining urns before it's too late.

The third and final book in the critically acclaimed Secret Box trilogy, a series pitch-perfect for fans of humorous mystery capers like Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library and the Mysterious Benedict Society. Who knew that insisting on opening a strange birthday present would lead to being kidnapped by an evil Greek god determined to conquer the world? Jax Malone certainly didn't. But now she's trapped in the back of a limo bound for Epimetheus's secret lair. He wants to control the three ancient urns that used to belong to Pandora's daughter. Magical urns that can suck hope, faith, and love out of the world. Now Jax, Ethan, and Tyler's only chance to fight Epimetheus's formidable power might be to find a secret weapon-and to realize that their family ties are stronger than any magic.