Three stories, three ghosts: a picture in a tower depicts a dangerous woman; a young woman marries an older man and arrives at his house, only to find that his dead wife is still there; and a dead man walks through a house every night, because sometimes the dead do come back....

The author points out ways in which recognizing sound and letter patterns makes spelling easier. Also important are recognition of diphthongs, silent letters, compound and abbreviated words, contractions, homophones, homographs, prefixes, suffixes, and base words. “Brain tickler” problems challenge students’ imaginations and test their learning progress.

Barron’s popular Painless Series of study guides for middle school and high school students offer a lighthearted, often humorous approach to their subjects, transforming details that might once have seemed boring or difficult into a series of interesting and mentally challenging ideas. Most titles in the series feature many fun-to-solve “Brain Tickler” problems with answers at the end of each chapter.

This very approachable text combines instruction in parts of speech and sentence structure with down-to-earth examples, funny illustrations, and examination of some of the more amusing and peculiar words in the English language. A chapter on clear e-mail communication and etiquette is brand new in this edition, as are many of the author’s challenging “Brain Ticklers.” Her helpful chapter on how to edit a school paper has also been heavily revised and updated.

Barron’s popular Painless Series of study guides for middle school and high school students offer a lighthearted, often humorous approach to their subjects, transforming details that might once have seemed boring or difficult into a series of interesting and mentally challenging ideas. Most titles in the series feature many fun-to-solve “Brain Tickler” problems with answers at the end of each chapter.

The Jedi series of comics was published as a series of one-shots chronicling the actions of five Jedi during the Clone Wars.

Mace Windu
Shaak Ti
Aayla Secura
Count Dooku
Yoda

Traditionally, series fiction for teens is light, fluffy, and more likely to be found in a beach bag than on a required summer reading list. But lately, series fiction is starting to take itself a bit more, well, seriously, a good example being The Black Book: Diary of a Teenage Stud by the mysterious Jonah Black. A projected trilogy, the true author of Jonah's fictitious journal is hiding behind the Black name, apparently not yet willing to take credit for this Twin Peak-ish, literary sex tale. In the first volume, "Girls, Girls, Girls," Jonah reveals his difficulty in separating his rich imaginary life with the real world.