Books with author Niko Silvester

Former About.com Creative Writing for Teens writer Niko Silvester covers the basics of essay writing in this short guide. Originally written for teens wanting to improve their essay-writng skills, Beginners Guide to Writing Essays is useful for writers of any age seeking to understand the three-part essay structure.With sections on choosing a topic, how to fit your work into an assigned length, types of essays, editing, referencing, and plagiarism, as well as more in-depth looks at each of an essay's three basic parts, the Guide will give you a simple structure that is almost infinitely expandable to suit many different types of writing, at almost any word count.The Beginners Guides to Creative Writing series will continue with additional introductions to different writing forms, including creative nonfiction, poetry, and fiction.

It is the summer of 1941, and fifteen-year-old Morgan Reilly has just moved to Newfoundland from New York to be with her father, an officer in the US Army stationed in St. John’s. Morgan adores fairies and has a collection of Victorian children’s books, so when she meets John O’Brien, nephew of her new landlords, she is intrigued by his story of being taken by the Good People when he was a child. As the war escalates, Morgan and John are sent to the small community of Ferryland to stay with John's grandparents. It was there that John says the Good People kidnapped him, and soon after they arrive, he becomes withdrawn and strange. Morgan is more concerned with her own problems to worry too much about John--her father may soon be called into active duty if the US enters the war, and her brother has run away to England and joined the Royal Air Force. Then Morgan has a fairy encounter of her own and it is up to John to find and rescue her. The Good People of Newfoundland are not the pretty winged beings of Victorian picture books, and Morgan is in real danger. 'The Coming of the Fairies' is a short YA/middle grade urban fantasy historical novel.

Octavian wants two things: to see the kentaur herd pass by on the plains, and to have a horse of his own. Ixion is a kentaur shaman-in-training, considered special by his people, but also set apart from them. During the season of madness a runaway horse brings the two together, where they learn that humans and kentaurs have more in common than they thought, and that their nightmares are connected.--It is the time of year when once wild things become wild again, still wild things become wilder, and civilized things shut their doors and pretend they had never been wild.During the season of madness, the kentaurs of the Pelion foothills—those half-horse, half-human creatures that humans call “centaurs”—journey from their home villages to the sacred lands across the Acheron River. Horses find the kentaur herd irresistible and often run away from their human masters to join the herd. One day, Octavian, stable-boy and floor cleaner at the local inn, gets carried off by the innkeeper’s horse, and ends up trapped in the kentaur herd. He is placed under the charge of Ixion, a young kentaur shaman-in-training, who begins to teach him that kentaurs are not the barbaric, half-sentient beasts he had thought they were.And then the dreams begin. Dreams in which ancient, cold things with too many teeth steal the boys’ tongues and threaten to steal their sanity. Now Octavian and Ixion both have to learn enough about the otherworld to make it though a grueling initiation ceremony across the Acheron, River of Woe. But first, Octavian has to gain acceptance from the kentaur herd.

Maddy has always been able to see things that other people can't, but she didn't know it might have something to do with the mother who died giving birth to her. Now her father has decided to move back to Scotland, and for the first time in her life, Maddy has a chance to learn about her mother's family and the strange circumstances surrounding her own birth. Maddy was born on a fairy hill--the same hill that the the 17th century writer Robert Kirk wrote about in his book The Secret Common-Wealth, and just like Kirk, Maddy's mother may not have died there. Like Kirk, she may still be alive, living in the Otherworld, and Maddy may even be able to see her.If Maddy can rescue her mother from the fairy hill, maybe her father won't be so sad all the time. But what if her mother doesn't want to be rescued? And who is the mysterious dark-haired boy who calls Maddy "milk sister?"The Secret Common-Wealth is a middle grade/YA fantasy novel.

There is a dragon in the woods near the village of Ravenswing. She is sleek and green and fire-breathing, and she's already eaten one of the village's geese. But Skavi and his little sister Triss know the dragon has an egg, and they don't want to see her die. So they come up with a plan to save the dragon and her egg--but will they get to them before the hunters do? "Fox Point Dragon" is a fantasy short story for children and the young at heart, or for anyone who has ever dreamed of meeting a dragon in the forest.

Always going, never gone. John O'Brien was kidnapped by fairies when he was six years old. Or so he has always believed. Morgan Reilly collects fairy books. When she actually meets the Good People, she finds out they are not the pretty, flowerlike creatures in her Victorian children's stories, but something far more dangerous. In Newfoundland, the "Good Neighbours" are always around, but belief in them is always dying out. In 1941, the world is at war, but something dangerous lurks close to home, too.