My name is Stuart Tennemeier, and I'm the President of the EMU Club (Exploration-Mystery-Unbelievable Club). This is my report of our second mission. Once you've solved one great mystery involving alien cats and a robotic dog, how do you find a second one that is just as awesome to solve? Not huge crimes or weird stuff, but everyday mysteries that happen to everyone, like why does time seem to pass more slowly right before school ends? And at other times, like when you're watching your favorite TV show it seems to pass really quickly? There are tons of little mysteries all around us. Sometimes if you look really, really, closely at them, you find out some amazing, incredible things. And you just might save the world.
Follows the efforts of Stuart, his younger sister, and his best friend to locate a missing video-game controller-- a seemingly innocuous mystery that may involve the fate of Earth itself!
The eagerly anticipated followup to the Newbery honor winner and New York Times bestseller, Three Times Lucky When Miss Lana winds up the mortified owner of an old inn with an unidentified ghost in the fine print, Mo’s itching to take the case. Plus, a historical ghost might make for some much needed Extra Credit in history. Who’s haunting the old inn? And why? Mo and Dale set out to solve their second big case—only to find the inn might not be the only thing in Tupelo Landing haunted by the past. A laugh out loud, ghostly, Southern mystery that can be enjoyed by readers visiting Tupelo Landing for the first time, as well as those who are old friends of Mo and Dale. Look for all the Mo & Dale Mysteries: The Ghosts of Tupelo Landing, The Odds of Getting Even, and The Law of Finders Keepers "A rollicking sequel." —Wall Street Journal "An irresistible Southern narrator—a literary descendant of Scout Finch of To Kill a Mockingbird." —Newsday on Three Times Lucky
No mystery is too great for super-sleuth Cam Jansen and her amazing photographic memory! Mysteries follow super-sleuth Cam Jansen everywhere she goes...even to a ticket booth. Cam, Eric, and Aunt Molly are in line to buy concert tickets when a person in a ghost costume starts scaring people. The ghost scares an old man, and he falls down. Then the woman in the ticket booth is robbed. Can Cam find the connection--and the thief? The Cam Jansen books are perfect for young readers who are making the transition to chapter books, and Cam is a spunky young heroine whom readers have loved for over two decades.
In this book Tiya Miles explores the popular yet troubling phenomenon of "ghost tours," frequently promoted and experienced at plantations, urban manor homes, and cemeteries throughout the South. As a staple of the tours, guides entertain paying customers by routinely relying on stories of enslaved black specters. But who are these ghosts? Examining popular sites and stories from these tours, Miles shows that haunted tales routinely appropriate and skew African American history to produce representations of slavery for commercial gain. "Dark tourism" often highlights the most sensationalist and macabre aspects of slavery, from salacious sexual ties between white masters and black women slaves to the physical abuse and torture of black bodies to the supposedly exotic nature of African spiritual practices. Because the realities of slavery are largely absent from these tours, Miles reveals how they continue to feed problematic "Old South" narratives and erase the hard truths of the Civil War era. In an incisive and engaging work, Miles uses these troubling cases to shine light on how we feel about the Civil War and race, and how the ghosts of the past are still with us.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK A modern classic of personal journalism, The Orchid Thief is Susan Orlean’s wickedly funny, elegant, and captivating tale of an amazing obsession. Determined to clone an endangered flower—the rare ghost orchid Polyrrhiza lindenii—a deeply eccentric and oddly attractive man named John Laroche leads Orlean on an unforgettable tour of America’s strange flower-selling subculture, through Florida’s swamps and beyond, along with the Seminoles who help him and the forces of justice who fight him. In the end, Orlean—and the reader—will have more respect for underdog determination and a powerful new definition of passion. In this new edition, coming fifteen years after its initial publication and twenty years after she first met the “orchid thief,” Orlean revisits this unforgettable world, and the route by which it was brought to the screen in the film Adaptation, in a new retrospective essay. Look for special features inside. Join the Random House Reader’s Circle for author chats and more. Praise for The Orchid Thief “Stylishly written, whimsical yet sophisticated, quirkily detailed and full of empathy . . . The Orchid Thief shows [Orlean’s] gifts in full bloom.”—The New York Times Book Review “Fascinating . . . an engrossing journey [full] of theft, hatred, greed, jealousy, madness, and backstabbing.”—Los Angeles Times “Orlean’s snapshot-vivid, pitch-perfect prose . . . is fast becoming one of our national treasures.”—The Washington Post Book World “Orlean’s gifts [are] her ear for the self-skewing dialogue, her eye for the incongruous, convincing detail, and her Didion-like deftness in description.”—Boston Sunday Globe “A swashbuckling piece of reporting that celebrates some virtues that made America great.”—The Wall Street Journal
Oliver, the meek son of a wealthy British industrialist, discovers the identity of a notorious thief, a man who has been skillfully evading Scotland Yard and snatching priceless artifacts for sport: Mr. Scant, his family butler. After first fearing for his life, Oliver discovers Mr. Scant's secret within a secret: the butler's crimes are actually a series of strikes against an underground group of business tycoons trying to master black magic.
Cecil and his amphibian pals are taking a well-deserved break after saving their pond from freeway construction when a third-grade science class shows up for a field trip. The kids nab Cecil for their classroom terrarium! At first Cecil is terrified, but he quickly gets used to being a class pet. That is, until Nesbit the chameleon shows up. Nesbit wants to be just like Cecil, so he matches his colors and follows him all around the terrarium. He’s driving Cecil crazy! Meanwhile, Cecil’s pals back at the pond are planning a rescue mission using Jeff the hamster’s radio controlled helicopter. But what will they do about Nesbit? Join the whole pond gang for this second delightful environmental romp.
Abigail Rook and her eccentric employer R.F. Jackaby dive into the cold case of their own resident ghostly lady to solve her decade-old murder in the third book of the New York Times bestselling Jackaby series. Jenny Cavanaugh, the ghostly lady of 926 Augur Lane, has enlisted the services of her detective-agency tenants to solve a decade-old murder—her own. Abigail Rook and her eccentric employer, R. F. Jackaby, dive into the cold case, starting with a search for Jenny’s fiancé, who went missing the night she died. But when a new, gruesome murder closely mirrors the events of ten years prior, Abigail and Jackaby realize that Jenny’s case isn’t so cold after all. Soon Abigail’s race to unravel the mystery leads her down to the mythical underworld and deep into her colleagues’ grim histories to battle the most deadly foe she has ever faced.
