This series falls into the Young Adult / Fantasy genre and has a strong similarity to the Harry Potter and Percy Jackson series, though it is for an audience a bit older. The story is centered around the real life Nicholas Flamel who was a French writer and reported Alchemist in the late 1300/early 1400's. Flamel and his wife Pernelle, have long been involved in helping the human race survive against the "Dark Elders" who are also immortal. A pair of teenage twins unknowingly join Flame's quest and they end up being the key to the events unfolding.
There are 5 books in the series so far, with the 6th book due out in May 2012.
The first one starts off a bit slow, but then the pace really picks up. By the 5th book it is just a whirling derbish of action and fun. Like Harry Potter, there is plenty of "magic" and the teenage twins are extraordinarily powerful and are there to save the world. Like Percy Jackson, the story is deeply steeped in mythology, but not just Greek. It has people like Machievelli, Billy the Kid, and William Shakespeare running around, figthing to save or destroy the world. I found that aspect of it very fun.
Here's the summary of the first book in the seires, "The Alchemyst", from Publisher's weekly on Amazon:
Twin 15-year-old siblings Sophie and Josh Newman take summer jobs in San Francisco across the street from one another: she at a coffee shop, he at a bookstore owned by Nick and Perry Fleming. In the vey first chapter, armed goons garbed in black with "dead-looking skin and… marble eyes" (actually Golems) storm the bookshop, take Perry hostage and swipe a rare Book (but not before Josh snatches its two most important pages). The stolen volume is the Codex, an ancient text of magical wisdom. Nick Fleming is really Nicholas Flamel, the 14th-century alchemist who could turn base metal into gold, and make a potion that ensures immortality. Sophie and Josh learn that they are mentioned in the Codex's prophecies: "The two that are one will come either to save or to destroy the world." Mayhem ensues, as Irish author Scott draws on a wide knowledge of world mythology to stage a battle between the Dark Elders and their hired gun—Dr. John Dee—against the forces of good, led by Flamel and the twins (Sophie's powers are "awakened" by the goddess Hekate, who'd been living in an elaborate treehouse north of San Francisco). Not only do they need the Codex back to stop Dee and company, but the immortality potion must be brewed afresh every month. Time is running out, literally, for the Flamels. Proceeding at a breakneck pace, and populated by the likes of werewolves and vampires, the novel ends on a precipice, presumably to be picked up in volume two. Ages 12-up.