The ultimate series of books for reluctant readers, High Interest Books are geared toward an interest level of grades 7-12 and a reading level of grades 4-7. Each book is clearly written using simple sentences and familiar vocabulary. Brilliant colour photos; fascinating sidebars; and user-friendly fact boxes, charts, and tables highlight key information in the text....

In our universe, Ponce de León is remembered for his fruitless search for the mythical fountain of youth. But, in an alternate universe, his quest found something very different—and very dangerous. After his return to Spain, bizarre rumors flew about what he had found there, and what had come back with him.

            Eighty-five years later, Spain sent a fleet of ships against England. The English were confident that they could repel the threat—but England’s fleet was annihilated by weapons shooting beams of fiery light, weapons which seemed to employ the blackest of sorcery, even if they were wielded by odd-looking beings in monk’s garb.

            The Queen herself was forced to flee to the New World on Captain Thomas Winslow’s ship, Heron, accompanied by her advisor Dr. Dee, whom some called a sorcerer, and an odd fellow named Shakespeare, hoping there to find the source of Spain’s powerful weapons. But they would find far stranger matters there than they had expected, such as a grown woman who had been only an infant a year before, and eerie tales of a gate to another world with beings who were not human . . .

...

Once before, the sentient races in the known part of the galaxy—humans, Orions, Ophiuchi and Gorm—had united to defeat alien invaders. The “bugs” were as incomprehensibly alien as they were revoltingly evil, using all other living things, intelligent or not, as food, and they had been defeated at a terrible cost. Decades have since passed and the gallant warriors of the battle against the bugs have grown old, while new generations have grown complacent . . . dangerously so.

 

Long ago, much of the population of an entire planet had built a huge fleet of ships, each ship larger than a city, and fled their world before its sun went nova. Those slower-than-light ships traversed many light years, and have now arrived at the world they intend to make their new home. They regard the fact that the planet is already colonized by humans as a mere inconvenience, the more so since their mode of communication is so different from anything humans use that they do not consider humans and their allies to be truly intelligent. And the arriving aliens know—or, at least, they believe—that when they die they will be reincarnated, so they do not hesitate to attack humans and their allies with suicidal fury.

 

This time, the intelligent races of the old alliance will not have to worry about becoming an invader’s meal—but that will be small comfort if the invaders decide that genocide is justified for their own survival. . .

...

In our universe, Ponce de León is remembered for his fruitless search for the mythical fountain of youth. But, in an alternate universe, his quest found something very different—and very dangerous. After his return to Spain, bizarre rumors flew about what he had found there, and what had come back with him.

            Eighty-five years later, Spain sent a fleet of ships against England. The English were confident that they could repel the threat—but England’s fleet was annihilated by weapons shooting beams of fiery light, weapons which seemed to employ the blackest of sorcery, even if they were wielded by odd-looking beings in monk’s garb.

            The Queen herself was forced to flee to the New World on Captain Thomas Winslow’s ship, Heron, accompanied by her advisor Dr. Dee, whom some called a sorcerer, and an odd fellow named Shakespeare, hoping there to find the source of Spain’s powerful weapons. But they would find far stranger matters there than they had expected, such as a grown woman who had been only an infant a year before, and eerie tales of a gate to another world populated with beings who were not human . . .

...