Beware! Only those who are McFearlessly brave may read from the pages of these monstrous memoirs. Crack open the “creature-skin” cover—if you dare—and enter the monsterminating world of 11-year-old Minerva McFearless, her brother Max, and their mysterious coyote friend, Mr. Devilstone, as they battle the evil army of the king of all monsters—the dreaded Zarmaglorg! This one-of-a-kind novel features full-color illustrations throughout and offers “scientific” data on all the terrifying things that go bump in the night, as well as recipes for keeping the bloodthirsty beasts at bay. First-time author Ahmet Zappa delivers a horrifying and hysterical tale that will be sure to bewitch readers of all ages.

Maybe it was the smell of the Snargle’s horrible breath, blowing from its rancid, rotten, razor-toothed mouth. Or was it the horribly loud clang, crash and clunk that thundered from the Snargle’s slithery snout that woke me? Yes, that was it. It was a sort of twelve-human-skulls-tumbling-together-inside-a-barrel-barreling-down-a-rocky-mountainside noise that filled the evil cavern.

Either way, there’s really nothing worse than a snoring, overweight Snargleflougasaurus, its lizardlike, spotted, yellowish belly rising and falling with each stinky breath. Ugh. It’s like a poisonous soufflé made with the world’s most vile ingredients.

As my eyes adjusted to the smoky darkness, I realized there was one thing far worse than a Snargleflougasaurus: finding my bruised and bloody father locked in a giant ironclad birdcage suspended over a bottomless pit of fiery molten lava.

That’s definitely worse.

Did I mention that my little brother, Max, and I were trapped in a giant ironclad birdcage too? It was terrible. Even though I am a McFearless, I have to admit that I was pretty scared. I had to find a way to get us out of there before it was too late. The fate of my family—and possibly the world—was at stake.

Calm down. Deep breath in, deep breath out. I’ve got to relax. Deep breath in. I can do this, I told myself.

My name is Minerva McFearless. I live at 1523 Rockinghorse Lane in Whistlesqueak. I’m eleven years old, and these are the things I can do:

1) I can read and write in Monstrosity, which is very exciting because Monstrosity is the secret language that all monsters use to communicate, and it’s the oldest language on the planet. Unfortunately, I’m not so good at speaking Monstrosity. It sounds like I’m trying to gargle two starving miniature weasels desperately fighting over a half-filled tin can of peanuts.

2) I can do a one-handed cartwheel into a round-off, usually on the first try.

3) Without bragging, I’m a really smart kid. And I am great at geography. I can name all of Whistlesqueak’s surrounding cities within a three-hundred-mile radius in alphabetical order, starting with the picturesque palazzi of Applelonia and going all the way up to the haunted hillsides of Zarmevil. In fact, there are 208 cities, to be precise. And if I wanted to, I could name them all backward. My dad is always telling me I’m too smart for my own good and that’s why I’m always getting into trouble.

My nine-year-old brother, Maxwell McFearless, on the other hand, is one of the most annoying brats on the planet. Here are some very good reasons for saying so:

1) He likes to pull my hair.

2) He chews with his mouth open, and food bits are always flying out. It’s so gross.

3) He’s constantly digging holes in our backyard and burying my stuffed animals against their will. In fact, he has transformed our backyard into a dreadful cemetery. On rainy days, you can see tiny, stuffed, fuzzy hands sticking out of muddy, soaked graves. Every time I go out there, I imagine their cute yet ghostly voices calling out to me:

“Why didn’t you save us, Minerva? How could you let Max do this to us, Minerva? We’ll never forgive you for this, Minerva. Never.”

Unfortunately, my diabolical brother mixed horse manure into the dirt, so digging up my animals is out of the question. My father told me he’d make Max dig them out and wash them, but I’m afraid of poop germs. I feel so guilty. It makes me want to punch Max right in the face. He makes it hard for me to love him, but I do. Because, for better or worse, he’s my little brother, and there’s nothing I can do to change that.

However, I do feel that it’s my job as an older sister to give Max equal parts love and torture, which I try to do on a regular basis.

At that moment, Max was next to me, lying facedown on the rusted floor of our filthy birdcage prison. His nose was two inches away from the monster flotsam of undigested bone fragments and other gross chunks of uneaten gore that littered our dangling domicile of death.

I could make out the bump on the back of his head, in the exact spot where the Snargle had clobbered him with its tail. The swollen lump on my own cranium was throbbing and pounding something awful. If Max’s head felt half as bad as mine, he was really going to hate it when I woke him up.

By pinching him really hard.

Really, really hard.

Look, I know what you’re thinking. How could I be so cruel? What if the Snargle heard his cries of pain and turned its attention toward us? Well, the truth is . . . Snargleflougasauri are notorious for their deafness, and it was time for Max to wake up.

Plus, I’ll take any opportunity I can get for a little revenge.

“Max, wake up,” I whispered soothingly as I squeezed a sensitive patch of skin (just below his armpit) with my fingernails.

“Ow! Why’d you do that?” Max yelped.

“Stuffed animals,” I replied.

“Arghh, my head,” Max moaned, rubbing his little scalp all over. He focused his bleary eyes on me. “I can’t believe you pinched me. What’s wrong with you?”

“I had to wake you up somehow, didn’t I?”

Max scowled. Then a winning thought seemed to come to his criminal mind.

“That didn’t hurt me at all, Mini,” Max taunted.

“It did too, you liar,” I answered, instantly annoyed.

“No, it didn’t, Mini,” Max said.

“Max, stop calling me that!” He knows I hate it when he calls me Mini. I’m a year and two months older than Max, but he’s two inches taller. I hate being bigger but smaller!

Life is so cruel. Maybe I should have pinched him again.

“Minerva? Max! Is that you?” Our father’s weary voice brought Max and me to instant attention. “I thought I’d never see you again.”

“Oh, Daddy, are you okay?” I cried.

“I’m a little banged and bruised, but I’ll survive.”

“Well, don’t worry, we’re gonna get you out of here,” Max said . . . and then he whispered to me, “Won’t we, Minerva?”

“No!” snapped my father. “I don’t want you kids doing anything. It’s too dangerous. Hold tight. I’ll find a way to get us all out of here somehow.”

“But, Dad, we can do it. We’re tough,” I said with a great deal of determination.

“Yeah, we made it here all by ourselves,” bragged Max, looking a little upset by our father’s lack of confidence in us.

“And we even fought monsters,” I added huffily.

“Listen to me, children. I know you both think that you know what you’re doing. But trust me, you have no idea what we’re up against here. A creature unlike any other, the most vilely vile, the most horribly horrible, the most murderously murderous monster of them all.”

I gasped. “You don’t mean—”

“Yes,” our father replied. “The Zarmaglorg—the king of evil. And we’re deep within the demonic depths of Castle Doominstinkinfart—a place no mortal has ever escaped.”

“Oh, no!” Max and I cried.

“Oh, yes. I’m afraid it’s true. He has been torturing me nonstop ever since I got here. He desires the evil magic held within the Enotslived Diamond.” I suddenly realized that my father—the magnificent Manfred McFearless, the most McFearless man in the world—was scared.

Not good at all, I thought.

“Mini, Dad, you might want to see this,” sputtered Max. He poked his head through the iron bars of our cage and pointed at the fiery pit below.

A millisecond later, an explosion of tremendous fury burst from the odious depths. The blast sent our cages crashing into each other, smashing Max and me into the bars of our hanging prison. We were tossed about like two unlucky kittens zipped inside a suitcase mercilessly dropped off a cliff. I was thrown into the rusted lock of our cage door, knocking all the air out of my lungs. And Max whacked his jaw so hard that I was sure he had shattered all his teeth. A cacophony bounced around the stalactites that hung from the cavern ceiling. Massive swarms of unhappy bats detached themselves from their cozy hiding places and flew around us in a panicked frenzy.

Thirteen more massive balls of billowing fire erupted from the chasm below. Flames licked angrily at the cave walls and flew right past our cage, singeing the hairs off my brother’s head. The smell of brimstone, burnt hair and fried bats was too much to bear, even for a McFearless.

Then, just as quickly as it had started, the quaking and baking stopped. For the time being, we were spared the cruel fate of being broiled alive. I determined three things as soon as the smoke cleared:

1) We were still breathing. (Good.)

2) The lock on our cage was busted. (Really good.)

3) The Snargle was finished with its nap. (Not so good.) view abbreviated excerpt only...

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