William Sleator

After Jared accidentally plunges into a polluted swamp, he gains the ability to read minds . . . and discovers dangerous secrets about his family
The first thing Jared does every summer when he and his family arrive at their cottage is hop on his bike and cruise along the back roads. Only this year he’s grown too big for the bike. When the brakes suddenly give out at the bottom of the hill where the road makes...

A collection of stories based on experiences from the author's youth and peopled with an unusual assortment of family and friends.

When he finds an ancient, egg-shaped object with which he travels back and forth in time, eleven-year-old Tycho grapples with several terrible futures he sees for himself and his family.

Eighteen-year-old Sam has always been jealous of his younger brother, Humphrey, the famous "wonder child" pianist. But now, that Humphrey is fifteen, the one-time child prodigy isn't able to get any more bookings. Sam's mother refuses to accept that Humphrey's career is over and devises a scheme to recapture his fame: Sam will compose "new works" by a long dead gypsy composer, and they will tell the world that the composer is dictating the music to...

Sixteen-year-old David, finding a strange machine that creates replicas of living organisms, duplicates himself and suffers the horrible consequences when the duplicate turns against him.

When she opens two strange boxes left in her care by her mysterious uncle, fifteen-year-old Annie discovers a swarm of telepathic creatures and unleashes a power capable of slowing down time.

When fifteen-year-old Doug and his younger sister Colette move with their parents to a forested wilderness area, they encounter some weird creatures whose lives are endangered.

When two youngsters realize they are having the same frightening dream, they begin searching for an explanation for this mysterious coincidence.

When her desperately ill older brother insists that she take him into their mysterious backyard garden, designed by their quantum physicist great uncle, fourteen-year-old Susan discovers that things are not always what they seem.

Seventeen-year-old Nick buys a used cell phone only to call his girlfriend, but strange and desperate people keep calling--one of them a denizen of Hell--begging for or demanding his help.