Hostage

August 1611. Jack Fletcher is shipwrecked off the coast of Japan - his beloved father and the crew lie slaughtered by ninja pirates. Rescued by the legendary sword master Masamoto Takeshi, Jack's only hope is to become a samurai warrior. And so his training begins. But life at the samurai school is a constant fight for survival. With courage in his heart and his sword held high, can Jack prove himself and face his deadliest rival yet?

H.I.V.E. is a top-secret school of villainy, where children with a precocious talent for wrongdoing are sent to develop their talents and become criminal masterminds. After all, "Villains have the best lines and wear the best costumes."

A terrorist doesn't let strangers in her flat because they might be undercover police or intelligence agents, but her children bring their mates home and they run all over the place. The terrorist doesn't know that a kid has bugged every room in her house, cloned the hard drive on her PC, and copied all the numbers in her phone book. The kid works for Cherub. Cherub agents are aged between 10 and 17. They live in the real world, slipping under adult radar and getting information that sends criminals and terrorists to jail.

Summer, 1944. As Allied soldiers prepare to land in France, Marc and his friends must destroy a battalion of German tanks that could halt the invasion in its tracks. The tide of war has turned against the Nazis, but desperation has made them more brutal than ever. Henderson's Boys' final mission will be their most dangerous. With food and weapons in short supply, survival is the biggest challenge of all.

Summer, 1940. Hitler's army is advancing towards Paris, and millions of French civilians are on the run. Amidst the chaos, two British children are being hunted by German agents. British spy Charles Henderson tries to reach them first, but he can only do it with the help of a 12-year-old French orphan. The British secret service is about to discover that kids working undercover will help to win the war.

File Note Strictly Confidential - Authorised Personnel Only. Subject: James Bond. Age: 13. Description: dark hair that falls in a comma above his brow, despite efforts to control it; blue eyes; tall for age; surprisingly strong; fluent French, good German. Essential components: a ruthless villain who will stop at nothing; a girl - blond, green-eyed, named Wilder Lawless; a fast car.

Otto and Wing have permission to leave H.I.V.E.'s secret island location to attend a funeral. But before they can reach their destination, the duo is ambushed. Who would risk assassinating the star pupil of the Higher Institute of Villainous Education?

Britain, 1941.The government is building a secret army of intelligence agents to work undercover, gathering information and planning sabotage operations. Henderson's boys are part of that network: kids cut adrift by the war, training for the fight of their lives. They'll have to parachute into unknown territory, travel cross-country and outsmart a bunch of adults in a daredevil exercise. In wartime Britain, anything goes.

The Higher Institute of Villainous Education is in grave danger: Dr Nero, its leader, has been captured by the world's most ruthless security force. It's up to Otto to save him, but first he must escape Nero's sinister replacement and H.I.V.E. itself. Then Otto faces the ultimate challenge - to break into MI6. Something no villain has ever succeeded in doing...The second thrilling story in the H.I.V.E. series from bestselling author Mark Walden.

Spring, 1943. The war is turning against Germany, but Hitler isn't giving up. In a secret bunker deep in occupied France, scientists are hard at work on Hitler's latest deadly weapon: code name FZG-76. Back in England Henderson's boys will need to undergo advanced sniper training if they've any chance of infiltrating the bunker. Parachuting into occupied France, they track down a secret dossier filled with invaluable material - and uncover the meaning of the enigmatic code.

One of Henderson's best agents is being held captive in Frankfurt. A set of forged record cards could be his ticket to freedom but might just as easily become his death warrant. A vital mission awaits him in France - if he can find a way to escape.

Overlord is reborn, and has developed the chilling ability to move from body to body, erasing the host’s personality and ultimately killing them. He must find Otto, the only host designed to contain him, and for that he needs the location of H.I.V.E. He also plans to take control of a secret US Army facility that is home to the Autonomous Weapon Programme, a computer-controlled system uniquely vulnerable to his control.

The leaders of the world’s villainous forces are being picked off one by one, and Dr Nero is forced to take temporary control of G.L.O.V.E. after Diabolus Darkdoom is seriously injured. Nero discovers that Otto, who has been missing for several months, is leading the attacks, and he is forced to issue a capture or kill order.When Wing learns of the order, she persuades Raven to join her on a mission to retrieve Otto.

Otto and the rest of the elite Alpha stream at H.I.V.E. have been sent on their most dangerous exercise yet: The Hunt. But when Otto and the rest of the Alphas arrive in the icy wastes of Siberia, it becomes clear that something is wrong. Dr Nero, the head of the school, has made some powerful enemies at the Global League of Villainous Enterprises - and the first strike against Nero will be a strike against the Alpha stream.

Otto and Raven are desperate to rescue their friends from the clutches of Anastasia Furan, head of the evil Disciples organisation. First they must track down the location of the Glasshouse, the prison where Furan trains children to become ruthless assassins. But Otto is also being hunted. The three months that Otto has spent following his expulsion from H.I.V.E. have given the Artemis Section - an elite division of the American intelligence services that specialises in capturing the toughest targets and reports only to the president - an opportunity to locate him.