Seventeen-year-old Michael goes to visit his eccentric mad-scientist uncle who, busy working on yet another time-travel experiment in his cluttered lab, barely notices him. He keeps muttering things like "quantum multiverse transporter" and Michael has to entertain himself.

Which is how Michael accidentally ends up in an alternate universe. Everything looks remarkably similar to his own world but with a few key differences, like lizard men dressed in gray suits and three-wheeled vehicles.

And then there's Emily, a sassy, confident girl who needs Michael's help before he can find his way back to his own dimension. (From Orca Book Publishers)

Arthur Slade is a prolific Saskatoon author of more than 25 YA, middle-grade and graphic novels. His books include Dust, winner of the 2001 Governor General's Literary Award for young people's literature — text and The Hunchback Assignments, which received the 2010 TD Canadian Children's Literature Award.