Sixteen-year-old Tom LeFave is trying to hold his world together. His family's marina is struggling. His dad is full of secrets. And the quarterback of the football team hates his guts. When a huge yacht docks at Tom's marina, things look brighter, especially when he meets Kat, the daughter of the boat's owner. Kat and Tom share a love of rum-running history. It's not long, however, before Tom starts to realize there's something more than history happening on the river. And if Tom can't figure it out in time, he just might be history too.
Fifteen-year-old Megan Cause Queen Caliente is president of the political science club and likes to make her voice heard. But after the protest she organized on the Las Vegas Strip takes an unexpected turn, she is suddenly wishing she could disappear. When her mother comes to pick her up at the police station, Megan learns, to her horror, that her whole life has been a lie. Her father is a convicted terrorist, responsible for the deaths of more than two hundred people, and her mother has been living under an assumed name for fifteen years. Megan's mom is taken away in handcuffs, and Megan is expected to return to her regular life under the supervision of her aunt. But everyone, students and teachers alike, is treating her differently now. Cruel accusations and gossip, as well as persistent reporters, follow her everywhere. Worried that she is destined to follow in her fathers footsteps, Megan, with the help of the charismatic Matt Mendez, the only person at school who hasnt turned on her, decides to track down the father she thought was dead and get some answers.
Small-town reporter Claire Abbott wakes from a nightmare, convinced a bomb will go off in the local school. And then, strangely enough, there really is a bomb scare. After the school is cleared by police and their sniffer dog, Claire is certain the threat isn't over. People are behaving strangely. Claire believes a bomber will attack the school. But when? And who is the bomber? Claire must track down the culprit and stop him before the bomb goes off. Race Against Time is the third novel in a series of mysteries featuring journalist and sleuth Claire Abbott.
Peter Strand is half Chinese and half Cherokee and was adopted by an elderly white couple from Phoenix. Now he's a forensic accountant in San Francisco, where he's struggling with his identity. When his employer asks him to investigate a San Francisco-based nonprofit organization, Strand meets a cast of quirky characters who all seem to be hiding a secret. Peter soon finds evidence of a probable fraud, but when fraud leads to murder, he's drawn deeper into a murky mystery. The Black Tortoise is the second book in the Peter Strand Mystery series.
Escaping the pressures of big-city policing, Maxine Benson is happy to be appointed police chief in the resort town of Port Ainslie. Max's biggest challenge is to overcome skepticism at her ability to deal with major crimes like the murder of Billy Ray Edwards. Few people mourn Billy Ray's passing. He was a bully and was also intent on derailing the biggest development project in the town's history. But murder's murder, and Max is ready to solve it on her own and prove her worth to the townspeople. And maybe even to herself.
Zack Freedman has complete control and feels a sense of calm on the high wire. If only he could say the same about the rest of his life. His fellow youth circus performer and roommate, Cubby, hates him, and his aunt dumps a yappy, excitable dog on him. When a necklace is stolen during a circus performance and the victim of the theft threatens to shut down the circus, Zack is desperate to solve the mystery so he can keep his place on the wire.
While volunteering at the local zoo, Robyn, Nick and Trevor learn that grizzly bears are being poached and their gall bladders removed for use in alternative medicine. Always ready to solve a mystery, the kids set out to find the poachers. Bear is not only big game, they learn, but big money to poachers. The stakes are high and the suspects many, as the kids head into their most dangerous adventure yet.
When Trevor, Nick and Robyn visit the Royal Tyrrell Museum, Robyn is inspired to raise funds for a dinosaur dig that will close soon if it doesn't find funding. The kids are caught up in another mystery when a chain of suspicious events, including the disappearance of important fossils and a fraudulent discovery at the dig, leads them to wonder what's going on. Is the new visiting scientist behind the fraud, or did Robyn's enthusiasm to save the dig lead her astray?
Trevor, Nick and Robyn are ready to solve another mystery. When bobsledder Josh Gantz is accused of deliberately injuring a fellow competitor, he runs the risk of being thrown out of the sport -- right before the World Cup. Courtney Gantz asks Trevor, Nick and Robyn to help clear her brother's name. Can they find out who framed Josh? What is the meaning of the strange coded messages they keep finding around Olympic Park? Who eats orange bananas, anyway? The kids must unearth the clues in a race against time, before Josh's championship dreams end up on ice.
Angus and his best buddy, Shahid, share a love of science and their robot, Gordon. But recently, the artistic Ella Eckles has had a peculiar effect on Angus. When a stink bomb at the school provides a chance for him to talk to her, he claims to share her interest in reading facial expressions and declares his ambition to become a crime-solving mentalist. He impresses Ella by identifying the stink bomber, but fails to mention he witnessed a scrawny kid setting off the bomb. When Ella's treasured sketchbook is stolen, she asks Angus to find the thief. Shahid thinks Angus should confess that he's not a mentalist, but Angus is certain he can learn to read people and recover Ella's sketchbook. He asks Shahid to help him investigate the suspects: Gaga Girl; the art teacher, Mr. Wilder; and finally, "scrawny kid." Equipped with rearview sunglasses and an informant who lurks in the washroom, the duo bungles their way through a series of encounters that alarm Shahid and provide Angus with some unfamiliar exercise.
