tell Joseph what, or whom, he's looking for, but their wordless, surprisingly effective communication makes for one of the finest and most unusual friendships in middle-grade literature. The two boys set out on what seems at times like a wild goose chase, tracking down Joseph's pony from Wenatchee to Yakima, Wash. Joseph's courage and cowboy spirit--and his rhythmic, nice-and-easy first-person voice--will keep pages turning, and fans of Gary Paulsen's Hatchet and Dogsong or Jean Craighead George's My Side of the Mountain will love the suspenseful survival aspects of the boys' perilous journey. --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor

Discover: In this stunning, poignant Wild West adventure, a 12-year-old orphaned boy battles bears, river rapids and frontier outlaws to retrieve his stolen pony.

Scholastic Press,
$16.99,
hardcover, 240p., ages 8-12, 9780545665773

The Dark DaysClub

by Alison Goodman

The Dark Days Club
by
Alison Goodman

Preparing for one's society debut is stressful for any young Englishwoman of the Regency era, but 18-year-old Lady Helen Wrexhall is more nervous than most. Her late mother, Lady Catherine, was a notorious traitor to King George III; her dreadful, misogynistic uncle is eager to marry off his tainted niece quickly; and her body has been flooded by an "unseemly vigor" and other disturbingly unnatural powers that make it even harder than usual to concentrate on the work of finding a husband.

It is the Earl of Carlston, her disgraced distant cousin, a "handsome but repellent" man with "dark shark eyes," who tells her the truth about who and what she is. She is a Reclaimer, just as her mother was, one of