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Airborn, written by Kenneth Oppel, (HarperCollins, 2004 HC, 2005 Pb), 368p, Ages 12+.
Imagine a world where luxury ships travel the skies instead of the ocean. This is the world of fifteen-year-old Matt Cruise, cabin boy on the Aurora, an early twentieth century passenger airship. Matt and his friend Kate battle bloodthirsty pirates, and survive a shipwreck while solving a mystery surrounding winged cat-like creatures. A rousing fantasy and heart-stopping adventure.

Flight of the Silver Turtle, written/illus. by John Fardell, (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2006), 212p, Ages 10-12.
The kids from The 7 Professors of the Far North look forward to a summer helping to build an experimental airplane in an old World War II hanger along the coast of Scotland. Little do they realize that their summer will be filled with danger, mystery, and suspense as it involves learning to fly airplanes, scuba diving, breaking secret codes, and searching for an antigravity machine created in the 1940s. The kids and professors join an aging, eccentric inventor to defeat Noctarna, an international criminal organization intent on locating the antigravity machine, in order to rule the world. Wacky adventures, energetic characters, and fascinating inventions make this book a fun read for children and adults. Some of the intense scenes may not be appropriate for younger children.

Operation Red Jericho: The Guild of Specialists Book 1, written by Joshua Mowll, illus. by Joshua Mowll, Julek Heller, Niroot Puttapipat, Benjamin Mowll, (Candlewick Press, 2005), 288p, Ages 13+.
Full of mystery, adventure, intrigue, and science fiction, teenager Rebecca and her younger brother, Doug are sent to live with their uncle following the disappearance of their parents in the remote Sinkiang region of China in 1920. Their tale begins aboard their uncle's research ship, Expedient, and continues through the streets of Shanghai as they encounter Chinese mercenaries, a pirate warlord, a Texan heiress, and a stolen cache of explosives called zoridium. By the end, they have exposed a heinous plot involving their parents and uncovered a secret society hidden from the world for hundreds of years. With cloth binding and a journal-style elastic clasp, there are sidebars, graphics, photos, newspaper clippings, a Morse code chart, diagrams of inventions, and descriptions of vessels, a secret society, and ancient fighting order of the Sujing Quantou. A great adventure novel.

Operation Typhoon Shore: The Guild of Specialists Book 2, written by Joshua Mowll, illus. by Julek Heller, Niroot Puttapipat, (Candlewick Press, 2006), 288p, Ages 11+.
Set in 1920 and continuing their adventures from Operation Red Jericho, Becca, Doug, and their uncle, Captain MacKenzie, find themselves stranded by a typhoon on a volcanic island in the South Pacific. Along with friends, Becca and Doug concentrate on locating a missing gyrolabe, solving the mysteries of the Guild of Specialists, and locating their missing parents. The art, maps, photographs, and appendixes are remarkable in detail and certainly add to the story's appeal. This is a great page-turner for kids who love Jules Verne and Indiana Jones.

Skybreaker, written by Kenneth Oppel, (HarperCollins, 2006), 304p, Ages 12+.
In this sequel to Airborn, Matt Cruise is now a student at the Airship Academy. With his friend, Kate de Vries, a mysterious gypsy and a daring captain, they team up to find a ghost airship that disappeared forty years ago. The Hyperion is rumored to carry a treasure beyond imagination, but at twenty thousand feet, no ship can reach the freighter alive.