Fifteen-year-old Peak Marcello is invited to participate in an "International Peace Ascent" in the Hindu Kush, with a team made up of under-eighteen-year-old climbers from around the world--but from the first something seems wrong, so when the group is attacked, and most of the climbers are either killed or kidnapped, Peak finds himself caught up in a struggle to survive, shadowed by the Shen, a mysterious snow leopard.

"Grandmother's attacks on the creatures of Bravelands come to a head"--

Many African stories are called "Spider stories". This book is about how that came to be. And it tells that long, long ago there were no stories on earth for children to hear. All stories belonged to Nyame, the Sky god. Ananse, the Spider man, wanted to buy some of these stories, so he spun a web up to the sky and went to bargain with the Sky god. The price the Sky god asked was Osebo, the leopard-of-the-terrible-teeth, Mmboro the hornet who-stings-like-fire...