Bed-Knob and Broomstick
by Mary Norton.

A well-written little book for early or pre-teens which has apparently been made into a Disney film.

Three English children befriend Miss Price, a local witch, and blackmail her: they'll keep her secret (that of being a witch) if she gives them magic. She refrains from turning them into frogs (she's a good person, after all), and accepts the agreement by making their bed magical: it can teleport anywhere & anywhen.

Needless to say, the kids have various misadventures with the bed. Finally they bring a 1611 necromancer to the present time. He and the witch like each other, and she eventually moves back in time to be his wife. The book ends with the girl being able to see and hear the by now 300-year-dead Miss Price puttering about in the garden, happy with her new life.

Memoirs of an Invisible Man. H. F. Saint.

Memoirs of an Invisible Man
by H. F. Saint.

My penchant for invisible man stories has already been stated; this one is an excellent adventure. It is essentially an extended chase scene: man who becomes invisible after industrial explosion is hunted by government. But Saint has put a lot of thought into the details of how an invisible man could hide, and his efforts come off very well in a wholly believeable story.

My dad said he thought there was a lot of sex in the book - I hadn't remembered that the first time I read it, but noticed some now; nothing really extraordinary, and I'm a bit puzzled by his way of remembering the book. I just remembered being able to clearly visualize several scenes, and not wanting to put the book down.

The chase-plot works because the chase gets increasingly complex as the story progresses - at the end there is actually no physical chasing or hiding - just information chasing & hiding.

Full Moon. P. G. Wodehouse.

Full Moon
by P. G. Wodehouse

Read this on insistence of Diana who laughs hysterically every few pages when reading a Wodehouse novel. This book displays an ungodly amount of British humor - lots of slapstick, situation comedy, puns and other word play, etc., and entirely lacking in the great English tradition of satire. Some of the dialog is amusing, to be sure, but, as Diana always says, I was "underwhelmed."

Fade

Fade
by Robert Cormier

I love invisible man stories (and enjoyed Cormier as a teen), so it's no surprise that I found this book enjoyable. Here, the invisibility is genetic, passing from uncle to nephew in a working class family. Along with the power to turn invisible (fade), which comes along right when the boy is entering puberty, comes an evil little voice that tells him to do bad things.

Paul, the main character, has got sex on the brain, as do most boys. He's crazy about his aunt, on whom he spies and discovers with the local gangster. He is very jealous. He then spies on others, while in the fade, and witnesses pedophilia & incest. This gives him a pretty jaded view of life and he eventually kills the gangster who happens to have been indirectly responsible for hurting his father.

Next generation is Ozzie, from a broken home, who starts killing people he's mad at and causing a general ruckus. Paul eventually finds him and has to kill him. Last generation is nameless and kills lots of people en masse.

Excellent depiction of descent of society into violent chaos.