Books for younger readers are lucrative right now, and publishers have swarmed to tales of wizard schools and supernatural romance like flies to a bloated, festering corpse. We are living in a post-Harry Potter-and-Twilight world, and 'young adult fiction' has become synonymous with mediocre imitators of either series. Very rarely, I come across a book that manages to surprise me. He enjoys danger and intrigue far more when it's happening to somebody else. The bite got infected and swollen and gross and gave him a deep mistrust of lizards, even though it probably wasn't a lizard that bit him.Īlthough he has had many adventures, he really does prefer curling up on the couch and watching some good television or reading a book. While traveling as a journalist, he watched television in 23 countries (Burmese soap operas were the most confusing Cuban news reports were the most dull), survived an erupting volcano in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a hurricane on small island in the Caribbean, 4 civil wars (one of them was over by the time he got there, thankfully), and a mysterious bite on his little toe in the jungles of Thailand. He used to know the Dewey Decimal System from memory. He's a Master SCUBA diver who hasn't been diving in way too long, and, most excitingly, a fully licensed librarian. He once won a 12-gauge skeet-shooting tournament because no one else had signed up in his age group.

He's an author of nonfiction for grown-ups (under a slightly different not very secret name), books for teens (as Alex e above), and, younger readers. Alexander London grew up in Baltimore, Maryland. At one time a journalist reporting from conflict zones and refugee camps, he is now a full time novelist living in Brooklyn, NY, where he can be found wandering the streets talking to his dog, who is the real brains of the operation.Ĭ. Alex London writes books for adults (One Day The Soldiers Came: Voices of Children in War), children (Dog Tags series An Accidental Adventure series) and teens (Proxy).

Proxy by Alex London