The Alchemyst

Josh and Sophie Newman are two normal teenagers living in San Francisco, California. They are blond-haired, blue-eyed twins. Josh works in a bookstore, and Sophie works in the coffee shop across the street. Their parents are archaeologists, which means that the family gets to travel all over the world. Currently, the twins are staying with their aunt while their parents are away at a dig.
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Josh works for Nick and Perry Fleming. Nick is dark-headed, and has almost colorless gray eyes. He dresses grungy and knows a lot of the bands that Josh listens to. Perry has dark hair, as well, but also has striking mint green eyes. They have a wide array of books from every century, it seems.

But one day, while Josh is in the musty cellar of the bookstore, a small man and his bodyguards enter the store. Shophie sees this from across the street in the coffee shop, and calls Josh. Josh has his iPod earbuds in, and doesn't hear his phone. So when he smells sulfur, he passes it off as being the sewers that run under the bookstore. Josh exits the cellar and finds the small man and the bodyguards attacking Mr. Fleming. There seems to be a strange, gas-like fluid coming from both of the mens' hands. The air is filled with the asphyxiating scent of mint and rotten eggs.

Sophie and Perry arrive on the scene and all Hell breaks loose. The bookstore is completely destroyed, and all that is left of any of the copies is two pages from the back of a book. That book, was the one that Dr. John Dee (the small man) was looking for. Josh succeded in ripping the last two pages out of the book.

Over the couse of a few days, Josh and Sophie's lives change forever. They learn that Nick and Perry are not who they say they are. They learn that everything around them is not what it seems, and that they must use their instincts and senses more than ever before. History and reality are twisted together in this book and alter even the reader's sense of the world. Josh and Sophie meet thousand-year-old warriors, Egyptian goddesses, and were-animals that they only saw in movies.

This is a wonderful book for people interested in history, magic, and the distortion of reality. World events, such as the Great Fire, are included. The writer really did his homework on every place and person he put into the book. (Places like San Francisco, Ojai, and Paris.)
I would highly recommend this for any person.