Books with author Catherine Stier

Kukamba loves to visit her grandmother, Gugu. Though the village where Gugu lives is dry and dusty, her house is big and sprawling and unlike any other. The courtyard and walls are decorated with beautiful paintings and clay animals, all made by Gugu herself. Best of all, when Kukamba visits, she gets to help shape and paint some of the wonderful zebras, elephants, and birds that Gugu is always adding to the house. When the heavy rains come and her grandmother's showpieces are destroyed, Kukamba is crushed. But the Gugu helps her see that an ending can also be a beginning, and art is not the only beauty the world has to offer. Set in the grassy plains of Zimbabwe and gracefully illustrated in watercolors, GUGU'S HOUSE is a unique tribute to the spirit of creativity and the immutable cycles of nature.

September 11, 2001Two teenagers on opposite sides of the globe flee everything they know. In a world turned upside down by tragedy, they are refugees.Sixteen-year-old Dawn runs away from her unhappy foster home in California and travels to New York City. Johar, an Afghani teenager, sees his world crumble before him. He flees his war-ravaged village and the Taliban, and makes a dangerous trek to a refugee camp in Pakistan. Thanks to his knowledge of English, Johar finds a job at the camp assisting Louise, the Red Cross doctor—and Dawn’s foster mother. Through e-mails and phone calls, Dawn and Johar begin to share and protect each other’s secrets, fears, and dreams, and a remarkable bond forms that gives each of them hope and the courage to find a path home.From the Hardcover edition.

In the modern age, magic is being born again, in the hands of young sorcerers. Evil also rises, now hell-bent on the destruction of all of humanity. Fourteen teens struggle with the perils of their own lives, further complicated by their developing powers. Worlds collide in showers of sparks and battles with mythical beasts. They are eventually brought together to the mystical sanctuary where their skills and determination are tested to the breaking point. In the race against time to restore magic to the world, they learn that maybe not everyone can be saved…

A mysterious drowning, a beautiful terrorist and a desperate search for a magical hybrid. What if only your worst enemy could help you save the world? The year is 2089 on earth with soaring heat, toxic waters, tricked-out amphibious vehicles, ice-themed dance clubs and fish that grow up on vines. Varik Teitur inherits a vast sea farm after the suspicious death of his marine biologist father. When Marisa Baron, a beautiful and shrewd terrorist, who knows way too much about Varik's father's work, tries to steal seed disks from the world's food bank, Varik is forced to put his dreams of becoming a doctor on hold and venture with her, into a hot zone teeming with treacherous nomads and a Fireseed cult who worships his dead father, in order to search for Fireseed, a seemingly magical hybrid plant that may not even exist. Fans of Divergent and Under the Never Sky will likely enjoy this YA dystopian romance.People are saying:“Emotional thrill ride!” - Electrifying Reviews“Extremely clever plot!” - Parafantasy

"Maybe I'm not the hero type. But I can dream. Sometimes I dream I'm a rescue dog, saving a child lost in the woods. Or a guide dog, helping a person who cannot see. Or a police dog, tracking sneaky robbers. But when I wake up, I must face the truth. It's mostly big dogs who do those jobs. And I'm just Barnaby, a small mutt living in an animal shelter." Barnaby has big dreams, but he finds his true calling when he's adopted into a loving home and becomes a bedbug-sniffing dog—helping to find hidden bedbugs in hotels, on airplanes, in movie theaters, and even in people's homes!This book is specially designed in Amazon's fixed-layout KF8 format with region magnification. Double-tap on an area of text to zoom and read.

Fireseed One is a futuristic thriller that can be enjoyed by both teens and adults. The year is 2089. Temperate climate has replaced Arctic ice, and much of what is now the United States is a lethal Hotzone, cut off by an insurmountable border from its northern, luckier neighbors, Ocean and Land Dominion. It is rumored that roving Hotzone nomads will kill for a water pellet or a slice of insect loaf, and that the ZWC, a dangerous Hotzone activist group, has infiltrated the border to the northern Dominions. Up in Ocean Dominion, all eighteen year-old Varik Teitur wants is to party on SnowAngel Island with his friend Audun and flirt with college girls he dreams of joining next year in his quest to become a doctor. Instead, he inherits a vast sea farm, following the death of his father, famous marine biologist Professor Teitur. Five weeks later, ZWC member Marisa Baron breaks into the farm’s secret seed vault and a fellow activist poisons the farm’s agar crops, the world’s food source. In order to save the last agar seedlings Varik is forced to journey to the Hotzone in search of Fireseed, a plant his father supposedly developed with magical hybridization properties. Varik takes Marisa along. Aside from being a terrorist, she’s the daughter of Melvyn Baron, the biggest real estate mogul in Land Dominion, and the professor’s old rival. Oddly, she knows lots about Fireseed, and what Hotzone land Professor Teitur bought to test the crop, before becoming embittered and trashing the project. No one except Varik knows whether Fireseed once existed off the drawing board. Might the refugees in Vegas-by-the-Sea have answers, or the bizarre Fireseed cult in the Chihuahua desert? Varik, the reluctant hero, must risk burning in the Hotzone, as his mother did, to save the ailing agar, and the world. Praise for Fireseed One: “Extraordinary thriller with a fascinating setting and rich, engaging characters who feel recognizable and human.” –Katia Lief, international bestselling author of You Are Next and Soul Catcher "Fully imagined, fast-paced, and thoroughly captivating, Catherine Stine's Fireseed One sucks you into its fascinating world on page one and doesn't let go until the very end." –Dale Peck, award-winning author of Sprout and The Drift House series “FIRESEED is so full of startling ideas that I couldn't stop reading! Recommended for fans of science fiction, thrillers, or for anyone looking for a story full of big surprises.” -- Amy Kathleen Ryan, author of Glow, the first novel in The Sky Chasers series “Action, adventure, love, and loss plus superb world building all adds up to an incredibly imaginative story – one that should not be missed.” -Carolyn MacCullough, author of Once a Witch and Always a Witch *Illustrated by the Author

Confined to her bed with an illness, she finds a pencil in her great-grandmother's workbox, but the house she draws is as unsatisfying as always - like a shaky doll's house with grass as unlike anything growing as ever. But that night, she dreams and re-discovers her drawing in a completely new world. Returning to this world night after night, Marianne encounters a strange but familiar boy and the house takes on an increasingly ominous significance for both of them.