Books published by publisher Orca Book Publishers (2014-03-01)

Jojo's back, released from jail, and people are tense and afraid all over again. They wonder if his friends will start showing up again. They wonder if they'll be walking down the street one day and they'll run into Jojo and Jojo will give them attitude or shove them around, just for fun. Jojo's friends have a way of making it hard - really hard - on people who decide to press charges against Jojo. Those people just wish Jojo would go away and never come back. Then there are the people who have hate in their hearts. These people wish something bad would happen to Jojo. Something really bad. Ardell Withrow is one of those people.

Bunny (real name Bernard) doesn't understand why his late grandfather wants him to get a tattoo. Actually, Bunny doesn't understand a lot of things, so it's good that his older brother, Spencer, is happy to explain things to him. But this is a task Bunny is supposed to do on his own, and nobody is more surprised than Bunny when, after he gets tattooed, he is befriended by a kid named Jaden and adopted into Jaden's gang. The gang hangs out at a gym, where Bunny learns to fight, but when it finally dawns on him that the gang is involved in some pretty shady and dangerous business, Bunny is torn between his loyalty to his new friends and doing what he knows is right.

Cady has always wanted to be a reporter, like her hero Nellie Bly, so after a fire burns down the orphanage she lives in, she's ready to leave small-town Ontario and make her mark as a newspaperwoman. A crumbling newspaper clipping leads her to Orrenstown, Indiana, where her investigation into a long-ago murder earns her a hard lesson in race relations. Smart and determined, and more than a little headstrong, Cady pokes a stick into a wasp's nest of lies, dirty politics, corrupt law enforcement, and racial tension, and ends up fearing for her life as she closes in on something she's never cared about before: the truth about her own origins.

Jill took a job which sounded perfect for the summer, guiding tourists on trail rides in the beautiful mountains. She didn't realize that the money was terrible, the hours long and the coworkers insufferable. After a blow-up with her boss, she takes a single man into the mountains for a ride, only to find that he is a dangerous killer. When Jill fights back and manages to escape, she is in a desperate race to survive and make it to safety.

The Great Bear Rainforest is a majestic place full of tall trees, huge bears, and endless schools of salmon. Follow the story of a lone wolf who swims to one of the small islands that dot the rainforest's coast. The island provides him with everything he needs - deer, salmon, fresh water - everything, that is, but a mate. When a female wolf arrives on the island's rocky shores, she and he start a family and introduce their pups to the island's bounty.

Ally isn't able to live with her mother. Instead, she lives far, far away, on the other side of the country, with her gram and great-aunt. But one summer, Ally goes to stay with her aunt and uncle in the "big city by the ocean" and gets to spend time with her mom. While exploring the shore, watching whales from the boat dipping into the salty water, Ally finds out something important: Her mother loves to swim as much as she does. This is a very personal story. Ally is based on the author’s niece, Jeanie, and Ally's mother is based on the author's sister, Sarah, who went missing from the downtown east side of Vancouver in 1998. Jeanie is like a seal in the water, and Sarah was just the same, but they never got to swim together. In this story, they do. Swimming with Seals is a story that was written for the thousands of children who long to live with their birth parents and will never fully understand why they can't.

DJ jets across the Atlantic to England to follow a series of obscure clues and symbols he hopes will reveal the truth about his grandfather. In London, he stays with Doris, the elderly woman he climbed Mount Kilimanjaro with. Laid up with a broken ankle, Doris has her grandchild, Charlie, offer assistance. Charlie - short for Charlotte - is a beautiful model who is romantically (and secretly) linked to a member of the British Royal Family. Spies, guns, double agents, the Cambridge Five and a vintage E-Type Jag are a few of the things DJ and Charlie encounter on an adventure that makes climbing Kilimanjaro look like a walk in the park.

No one is more surprised than Rennie to hear that his late grandfather, whom he hardly knew, has left a mission for him to fulfill. Rennie is to fly to Iceland and deliver a message from beyond the grave, but when he gets there, nothing is simple or straightforward. For one thing, Brynja, the teenage daughter of the family he's staying with, is downright hostile. Her father Einar, who is to be Rennie's guide in Iceland, is preoccupied with looking after his elderly father-in-law, an old friend of Rennie's grandfather. Bored and a little bit annoyed, Rennie explores the town and becomes aware that the family is dealing with more than their grief over Brynja's mother's death the year before. Before he realizes what is happening, his curiosity puts Rennie in grave danger, with no one to trust and no one to save him except himself.

Jim, Mickey, and Lisa belong to a secret club called the Sewer Rats. Every Saturday, the Sewer Rats reign supreme in paintball wars held in the city's storm drain system. The new kid, Carter, wants to join, but Lisa doesn't want him in the club. When Carter is hurt in his first paintball war, Jim and Mickey suspect that Lisa planned the accident. They try to confront her, but she runs into the tunnels just as a rainstorm begins. Jim and Mickey have to get Lisa out before the tunnels fill with water.

Safira doesn't believe in ghosts, but the girl in her cabin at camp was not a living person, so what was she? Her friend Trinity is convinced Safira's seen a ghost and sets out to discover who the ghost girl is. Safira is too busy dealing with her family to help solve the mystery. Safira has never gotten along with her sister, Mya, and now that Mya's pending marriage dominates the family there seems to be no hope for friendship between them. But when Trinity discovers the death of a girl named Myra, Safira starts to wonder if the ghost-girl has an important message about her own sister.

Theo is brokenhearted when he accidentally lets go of the string of his party balloon. As he watches it float out of sight, Theo wonders where his balloon might have gone. Luckily, his older brother Zeke knows everything about everything. Zeke explains that it is a little-known fact that all lost balloons end up in Chicago, the Windy City. Then he tells Theo about Frank, who is responsible for collecting all the balloons in the world. Theo is so touched by Frank's story that he decides to send him a message of hope the only way he knows how. A unique story filled with the magic and whimsy of childhood imagination, Once Upon a Balloon will delight young readers and reawaken the child in all of us.