Marie-Grace can't wait to begin her journey up the Mississippi River with her father. The steamboat they're traveling on is crowded with all sorts of interesting passengers, including Wilhelmina Newman, a girl Marie-Grace's age. Wilhelmina is traveling alone, and she's carrying a secret in one of her trunks--clues to hidden Gold Rush treasure.
The tale begins over three-hundred years ago, when the Fair People—the goblins, fairies, dragons, and other fabled and fantastic creatures of a dozen lands—fled the Old World for the New, seeking haven from the ways of Man. With them came their precious jewels: diamonds, rubies, emeralds, pearls... But then the Fair People vanished, taking with them their twelve fabulous treasures. And they remained hidden until now... Across North America, these twelve treasures, over ten-thousand dollars in precious jewels, are buried. The key to finding each can be found within the twelve full color paintings and verses of The Secret. Yet The Secret is much more than that. At long last, you can learn not only the whereabouts of the Fair People's treasure, but also the modern forms and hiding places of their descendants: the Toll Trolls, Maitre D'eamons, Elf Alphas, Tupperwerewolves, Freudian Sylphs, Culture Vultures, West Ghosts and other delightful creatures in the world around us. The Secret is a field guide to them all. Many "armchair treasure hunt" books have been published over the years, most notably Masquerade (1979) by British artist Kit Williams. Masquerade promised a jewel-encrusted golden hare to the first person to unravel the riddle that Williams cleverly hid in his art. In 1982, while everyone in Britain was still madly digging up hedgerows and pastures in search of the golden hare, The Secret: A Treasure Hunt was published in America. The previous year, author and publisher Byron Preiss had traveled to 12 locations in the continental U.S. (and possibly Canada) to secretly bury a dozen ceramic casques. Each casque contained a small key that could be redeemed for one of 12 jewels Preiss kept in a safe deposit box in New York. The key to finding the casques was to match one of 12 paintings to one of 12 poetic verses, solve the resulting riddle, and start digging. Since 1982, only two of the 12 casques have been recovered. The first was located in Grant Park, Chicago, in 1984 by a group of students. The second was unearthed in 2004 in Cleveland by two members of the Quest4Treasure forum. Preiss was killed in an auto accident in the summer of 2005, but the hunt for his casques continues.
During an extended winter holiday, the Hardy boys are summoned to Montana by their father to help with a case: recovering stolen gold. The trip out West is anything but easy; the boys’ fame and success as amateur detectives has reached their father’s enemies, who are determined to undermine a reunion. Facing dangers from man, beast, and nature, the Hardy boys embark on a journey to recover the missing gold and bring justice to the small mining town of Lucky Bottom. This is the fifth book of the Hardy boys series, first published in 1928. While the author is credited to be Franklin W. Dixon, in reality, Leslie MacFarlane and Edward Stratemeyer are primarily responsible for the early volumes, including this one. This Standard Ebooks edition is based on the original 1928 text. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.
The Gold family lived an idyllic life in pre-war Poland, each doing their part to run the family grocery store and tobacco concession. The oldest daughter, Shoshana, had many friends, her sister Esther was meticulous as she worked at the family store, and young David was doted on by them all. But that life is shattered in 1939 when Germany invades Poland and Jewish people are forced into the streets; their homes, schools, and businesses burned. We follow the Gold family's journey as they are forced into hiding. Just hours before the Nazis come to take over their current town, their mother has a premonition that today they will have a savior. When that someone appears, they are given hope for the first time since leaving home. But Shoshana has learned to be wary of strangers and knows that her family is in danger. The Golds hide in a cramped, secret enclosure for twenty-six months. Appalling conditions, starvation, fear of imminent betrayal and capture makes this a heart-stopping testament to the human spirit.
It's the most valuable ounce of gold in the world, the celebrated, the fabled, the infamous 1933 double eagle, illegal to own and coveted all the more, sought with passion by men of wealth and with steely persistence by the United States government for more than a half century—it shouldn't even exist but it does, and its astonishing, true adventures read like "a composite of The Lord of the Rings and The Maltese Falcon" (The New York Times). In 1905, at the height of the exuberant Gilded Age, President Theodore Roosevelt commissioned America's greatest sculptor, Augustus Saint-Gaudens—as he battled in vain for his life—to create what became America's most beautiful coin. In 1933 the hopes of America dimmed in the darkness of the Great Depression, and gold—the nation's lifeblood—hemorrhaged from the financial system. As the economy teetered on the brink of total collapse, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in his first act as president, assumed wartime powers while the nation was at peace and in a "swift, staccato action" unprecedented in United States history recalled all gold and banned its private ownership. But the United States Mint continued, quite legally, to strike nearly a half million 1933 double eagles that were never issued and were deemed illegal to own. In 1937, along with countless millions of other gold coins, they were melted down into faceless gold bars and sent to Fort Knox. The government thought they had destroyed them all—but they were wrong. A few escaped, purloined in a crime—an inside job—that wasn't discovered until 1944. Then, the fugitive 1933 double eagles became the focus of a relentless Secret Service investigation spearheaded by the man who had put away Al Capone. All the coins that could be found were seized and destroyed. But one was beyond their reach, in a king's collection in Egypt, where it survived a world war, a revolution, and a coup, only to be lost again. In 1996, more than forty years later, in a dramatic sting operation set up by a Secret Service informant at the Waldorf-Astoria, an English and an American coin dealer were arrested with a 1933 double eagle which, after years of litigation, was sold in July 2002 to an anonymous buyer for more than $7.5 million in a record-shattering auction. But was it the only one? The lost one? Illegal Tender, revealing information available for the first time, tells a riveting tale of American history, liberally spiced with greed, intrigue, deception, and controversy as it follows the once secret odyssey of this fabulous golden object through the decades. With its cast of kings, presidents, government agents, shadowy dealers, and crooks, Illegal Tender will keep readers guessing about this incomparable disk of gold—the coin that shouldn't be and almost wasn't—until the very end.
A game of hide and seek in the old Castle Key lighthouse during a violent thunder storm leads to an amazing discovery - a tattered old treasure map! Scott, Jack and Emily can't wait to search for the hidden gold but first they must solve the clues to uncover its secret hiding place. And someone else is after the gold too - someone who doesn't plan to let anyone get in their way! Can our heroes figure out the map, outwit their enemy and find the hidden treasure? The third title in this fabulous new series packed with mystery and adventure!
"When Pete first started looking for the missing treasure, he never dreamed this would happen--that he would find himself in another time--in the body of another boy!"--Page 4 of cover
Nancy, Bess, and George are vacationing in beautiful Big Sur on the rugged California coastline. But soon after they check into the Opa Tourist Lodge, their cottage is ransacked, and Nancy makes a startling discovery: The popular tourist retreat is also a hotbed of deception and crime! Her investigation leads from the magnificent Caine Castle straight to the heart of a dark mystery. Deep underground lies a labyrinth of caves—the site, according to rumor, of a treasure in gold. But someone wants the truth behind the legend to stay buried forever, and the deeper Nancy digs, the more perilous her search becomes!
Gear up for an exciting adventure with the thrill-seeking Kidds as they search for a missing Incan city in South America made entirely of gold! When Bick and Beck Kidd find a hidden trove of pirate treasure, it includes a map with clues to an even bigger score: the lost Incan city of Paititi. But treasure hunting is never easy—and when the map is stolen, the Kidds must rely on Storm's picture-perfect memory to navigate the dangerous Amazon jungle. Watch out for that nest of poisonous snakes! To save the Amazon rainforest and stop a Peruvian tribe from losing their home, the Kidds must unlock the secrets to the missing map and find the fabled city of Paititi . . . before the bad guys find it first. The race is on!
