Books with author Stuart Webb

Henry discovers a horse with a scar on his forehead in his front yard. He will discover later this is a hornless unicorn, the victim of a brutal attack that happened over a hundred years ago in a land called Altara. The horse carries him to Altara where the first person he meets is an old man called Papo. After traveling for two days with Papo his suspicions are confirmed, Papo is plotting to use Henry for his own purposes and then to “be rid of him and the other boy.” Henry sets off alone, struggling with whether or not he can be hurt or even killed in this alternate world. At the end of each day in Altara Henry falls asleep only to wake up in his own bed in his own suburban life. At home he has two friends, Jamal and Fred and a little brother named Larry. While Henry is struggling to understand his alternate world he is also struggling with the challenges of his middle school life. A great deal hangs on a chess match against the coach. Also, Jamal falls in love but needs Henry and Fred to go to the dance with his girlfriend’s best friends. This is Henry’s first middle school relationship and his stomach is tied in knots. He also must face his anger issues and his fear that dweebdom is an inescapable black hole. Back in Altara Henry meets Anree who in a few days will be raised up as the Tara, the leader of the land of Altara. They are identical, this was the fact Papo and his friends planned to use to unseat the new Tara.Henry and Anree decide they must find the lost key to the Gates of Altara and heal the ancient wrong done to the unicorn in order to fully establish the true Tara. The horn that was brutally taken from the unicorn a hundred years ago has been hidden in plain sight in the apartment of one of Papo’s co-conspirators, and amazingly Henry’s grandfather has the key to the Gates. Henry not Anree, is the true heir to the role of the Tara. Through all this Henry discovers he can accept his assigned place in school as a dweeb with a chessboard or decide he will be something more. He realizes the reason he doesn’t have many friends is he is a lousy friend. He learns he must take responsibility for Henry. In the final pages Henry wakes up in his bed at home to find his mother reading his journal. She wants to know if this is fact or fiction and whether Henry or Anree has come home to her.

Henry thinks he is the King of Dweebs. He wants to escape. He wants to be?Well maybe that's the problem he doesn't know what else to be or how to get there. A hornless unicorn takes him to a land called Altara. In Altara, Henry will meet his identical other, discover he is the real heir to rule Altara and try not to get killed. He also finds a fire in his gut. He finds out what it is to be alive. His greatest challenge is to sustain that fire in middle school where he feels he is suffocating. Where he will play coach in two chess matches, go to his first dance, have his first middle school romance (and break up) and face the impossible challenge of climbing the rope hanging from the gym ceiling. Stuart weaves together the two worlds and the life of Henry and his identical other into 12 days of very realistic living. By the end Henry knows who he is. He knows what it means to be Henry on Fire living in suburbia.

Who is the real enemy? This is the question that confronts Sam, the champion of the Sereia in their cosmos-spanning war with the Gibbus, and the main character in this story.Sam is an unimposing boy who has no past and no memory of who he is, yet he possesses extraordinary abilities. He is also Earth’s last hope for salvation from the Gibbus who, in seven days, will destroy the planet and everyone on it. This is not his choice however: that is the decision of the alien Sereia, his mentors and guides, as he is forced to confront this hazardous task. They have their own reasons for wanting Earth to be saved, but are too weak to challenge the Gibbus themselves. In their search for a human champion they find the unlikely and ill-prepared young boy, Sam – but this child is not quite as he appears…This story is much more than simply a science-fiction fantasy tale, it is also one of trust, relationships and responsibility. Sam is befriended by seventeen-year-old Emma, a girl with troubles of her own. At least being dumped by text by her feckless boyfriend is not one of them! We learn of her struggles to shore up her parents crumbling relationship and the depths of the pain and loss her whole family feel at the untimely death of her older brother.Together, Sam and Emma travel from Primrose Hill and Finsbury Park in London to New York, via Kuala Lumpur and a small Indonesian village, in a desperate race to halt this deadly threat to the Earth. All the while the power within Sam grows to a point where it threatens to overwhelm him.This is a tense thriller, containing some violent scenes, but is also laced with Wes Stuart’s witty humour and shrewd observations of the things we take for granted. The many unexpected twists and turns will keep readers hooked until the final page.

Henry thinks he is the King of Dweebs. He wants to escape. He wants to be?Well maybe that's the problem he doesn't know what else to be or how to get there. A hornless unicorn takes him to a land called Altara. In Altara, Henry will meet his identical other, discover he is the real heir to rule Altara and try not to get killed. He also finds a fire in his gut. He finds out what it is to be alive. His greatest challenge is to sustain that fire in middle school where he feels he is suffocating. Where he will play coach in two chess matches, go to his first dance, have his first middle school romance (and break up) and face the impossible challenge of climbing the rope hanging from the gym ceiling. Stuart weaves together the two worlds and the life of Henry and his identical other into 12 days of very realistic living. By the end Henry knows who he is. He knows what it means to be Henry on Fire living in suburbia.