When Alton's ageing, blind uncle asks him to attend bridge games with him, he agrees. After all, it's better than a crappy summer job in the local shopping mall, and Alton's mother thinks it might secure their way to a good inheritance sometime in the future. But, like all apparently casual choices in any of Louis Sachar's wonderful books, this choice soon turns out to be a lot more complex than Alton could ever have imagined. As his relationship with his uncle develops, and he meets the very attractive Toni, deeply buried secrets are uncovered and a romance that spans decades is finally brought to a conclusion. Alton's mother is in for a surprise!

While Mrs North, Marvin's teacher, is on holiday she asks him to look after Waldo — her dog. Suddenly, Marvin has become the luckiest boy in school. He'll get to sniff about Mrs North's house, look in her wardrobe, check out her bathroom and rummage in her fridge... Well that's what Stuart and Nick, his best friends, would like to do. But Marvin takes things a little more seriously. After all, he gets paid $3 a day and he will get a bonus on top if everything goes smoothly. What could possibly go wrong? Just how long can Marvin hold on to his luck... Louis Sachar tells this tale with a refreshing and bold frankness and again the characters are vividly portrayed in this the fourth of the series.

Cursed! David was only trying to be cool when he helped some other boys steal an old lady's cane. But when the plan backfires, he is the one whom she 'curses'. Now David can't seem to do anything right. The cool kids taunt him and his only friends are weirdos. He even walks into Spanish class with his fly unzipped! And when he finally gets his nerve up to ask out a cute girl, his trousers fall down midway! But is this the curse at work or is David turning into a total loser? This work is an another witty and very clever tale by the master storyteller Louis Sachar. Other titles in this series are There's a Boy in the Girls' Bathroom and Dogs Don't Tell Jokes.

'Why did the guy eat two dead skunks for breakfast?' 'Because dead ones squeal when you stick the fork in.' Gary W. Boone knows he was born to be a stand-up comedian. It is the rest of the kids in the class who think he is a fool. Then the Floyd Hicks Junior High School Talent Show is announced, and he starts practising his routine non-stop to get it just right. Gary's sure that this will be his big break — he'll make everyone laugh and will win the $100 prize money. But when an outrageous surprise threatens to turn his debut into a disaster, it looks as if the biggest joke of all may be on Gary himself.

Give me a dollar or I'll spit on you. That's Bradley Chalker for you. He is the oldest child in the class. He tells enormous lies. He picks fights with girls, and the teachers say he has serious behaviour problems. No one likes him — except Carla, the new school counsellor. She thinks Bradley is sensitive and generous, and she even enjoys his far-fetched stories. Carla knows that Bradley could change, if only he weren't afraid to try. Sometimes the hardest thing in the world is believing in yourself.

Angeline is brilliant! She knows way more than a child of her age ought to. When she is put up a class at school she finds that her intelligence doesn't equip her entirely for dealing with the pressures of being with the older group. Soon she is finding refuge with a teacher and her tropical fish and another unlikely student. With Louis Sachar's hallmark twist-and-turns of plot and lovely humour, this delightful novel is thought-provoking and brilliant.

Stanley Yelnat's family has a history of bad luck going back generations, so he is not too surprised when a miscarriage of justice sends him to Camp Green Lake Juvenile Detention Centre. Nor is he very surprised when he is told that his daily labour at the camp is to dig a hole, five foot wide by five foot deep, and report anything that he finds in that hole. The warden claims that it is character building, but this is a lie and Stanley must dig up the truth. In this wonderfully inventive, compelling novel that is both serious and funny, Louis Sachar has created a masterpiece that will leave all readers amazed and delighted by the author's narrative flair and brilliantly handled plot.

The application of advanced philosophical techniques in a defence of historical materialism made the first edition of this book, published in 1978, a flagship for analytical Marxism. In this edition, the author re-constructs the theory, discussing the implictions and his reservations.