Spring break is a string of firsts for 14-year-old Charlie Hudson: first cruise, first kiss, first time kidnapped by hijackers. After a hijacker knocks him unconscious, Charlie comes to in a lifeboat full of kids adrift in the Pacific Ocean. Charlie must survive mutinies, sharks, killer storms, and drug runners. Back in the U.S., rogue government agents who hired the hijackers are coming after him, but they have no idea who they're messing with. With Kevin, his new best girl, and Sam, his side-kick, Charlie, the invisible boy, is transformed into a full-blown hero.

Jake 2000 lives on the planet Chaos. He is the 2000th Jake to ferry eight-year-old dead kids across the Erebus to Shades, the land of the dead. His life is pretty routine. A batch of dead kids shows up and it's Jake's job to get them safely offshore and across the river. Unfortunately, Jake's side of the river is either erupting or collapsing. The sky spits fire. There are trap-spiders and Darts as big as 747s. On the river, there are giant slugs big enough to swallow Jake's boat, and pirates out body-snatching. Two things happen that change his life. He's chosen by the Mumming- Gloria, and...

Jade Hill and Associates are back on the case. Wilburn Monk is on trial for the murder of Dee Dee Stokes and the agency has been called to give testimony. Darling Fisher, a self-proclaimed vampire, hires them to catch trespassers on his property in the swamp. It appears that the trespassers might be werewolves. Darling also hires a warlock, Lipscomb Montrose, to cause the trespassers' death once the agency has identified them. The problem is that Lipscomb has decided to turn over a new leaf, promising himself he'll never ever break another oath or do bad deeds (warlocks are known for their...

Sam's dad is going overseas. It makes Sam weak at the knees. His dad needs good luck. Sam finds it in the muck.

Pam's dad is going overseas. It makes Pam weak in the knees. Her dad needs good luck. Pam finds it in the muck.

Most Americans think of Betsy Ross as she was depicted in Charles Weisberger's popular painting The Birth of Our Nation's Flag--a motherly figure, sewing at the hearth. In fact, as Jo Ann Menezes's analysis in Nostalgia, Gender, and Nationalism points out, Ross was a widowed businesswoman who ran an upholstery shop out of her house. In Weisberger's painting, all signs of economic industry are erased and Ross's house is transformed into a home rather that the site of cottage industry. Ross is constructed as the perfect heroic mother, worthy of sacred creation; thus, our flag was born.

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Using texts ranging from the writings of Schlegel to the speeches of the fiftieth-anniversary commemoration of D-Day, these essays explore the ways in which nostalgia brokers the relations between the master narratives of gender and the master narratives of nationalism. Although such narratives seem to present nation as an unchanging essence, these essays all deal with texts that on analysis show nationalism in an evolving response to developments, both political and cultural, that destabilize the idea of nation.