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Rick Riordan's The Demigod Diaries is a collection of extra stories for 10 year olds who already feel at home at Camp Half-Blood.
It opens with a letter from Riordan himself, written as if to a young demigod who needs a few survival tips. Then it goes straight into Luke's diary.
Luke is fourteen and has been on the run since he was nine. He travels with Thalia, who's twelve and scared of almost nothing. Demigods attract monsters, so they never stay anywhere for long.
For three days they've been following a glowing goat across Virginia. Thalia is sure it's a sign from her dad, Zeus. Luke mostly wants to know why its udders are labelled Pepsi and Diet Mountain Dew.
The goat leads them to a gloomy mansion in Richmond. The door locks behind them. The curtains turn to sludge and grab Thalia. And upstairs there's a sad old man in a snakeskin suit who can't speak for himself. His voice comes out of the monsters in the cage next to him!
Those monsters can copy any voice they hear, which is SO creepy. They like to eat at sundown. So Luke and Thalia have one long day to find a way out, and Luke's only weapon is a golf club (his sword got melted in acid, long story).
Luke is great company. He cracks jokes when he's frightened and he's quietly bitter about the dad who never came back. You also see how much he cares about Thalia, even when she drags him into places he'd rather not go.
There are human bones on the mansion floor, and the monsters have eaten every demigod who came before. Both runaways hint at hard times at home too. If your reader has coped fine with Percy's adventures, this is the same sort of scary.
It's a book for fans, though. Riordan's opening letter says one of the later stories is set after the final Percy Jackson book, so it's one to save until they've read the series.
Not met Percy yet? Start with The Lightning Thief, where he finds out what he really is on a school museum trip (and discovers his maths teacher is definitely not human).
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