FernFolio » mysteries

The Curse of the Evening Eye by Carol Matas and Perry Nodelman

fernfolio — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:03:27 +0000

Molly and Adam Barnett are trying to break a century and a half-old curse to save their father’s life. Dad’s 35th birthday is only days away, and, if they cannot stop her, Lucinda, the ghost of a long-dead family servant, is going to scare him to death. Lucinda is still furious that, back in the middle of the 19th century, their great-, great-, great-grandfather fired her after accusing her of stealing some valuable jewellery. Ever since, her ghost has been killing off the men of the family on the eve of their 35th birthdays.
Tim Barnett, the children’s father, is a well-known documentary film maker, famous for his films debunking the myth that ghosts exists. Molly, and her younger brother, Adam, are proud of their father and of his award-winning movies. Too bad he’s completely wrong about the ghosts. They want to tell him about Lucinda, and her intention to kill him, but are afraid that the shock will accomplish exactly what they hope to avert. Fortunately, the children have help in the form of the ghost of their grandfather, who has recently turned up with an old family desk.
When their father flies off to California to present his newest film, The Proof that Ghosts Exist? Not! at a film festival, Molly and Adam, and their ghostly granddad, tag along, determined to keep dad safe while figuring out how to solve the problem of Lucinda, once and for all.
Strange men who look just like lost friends, chance encounters with the spirits of old miners, former teachers, and kindly neighbours, earthquakes, dust storms, and the wildest “technical effects” going keep the tension rising until the book’s concluding cliff-hanger!
The Curse of the Evening Eye, by Carol Matas and Perry Nodelman, is the second book in The Ghosthunters series. Watch for The Hunt for the Haunted Elephant!
FernFolio Editor

Danger at Mason’s Island by Tom Schwartzkopf

fernfolio — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 00:36:23 +0000

Best friends Angela Black and Emmie Seegal have to come up with a way to earn some summer spending money after their baby-sitting job falls through. Fortunately, both of them have lots of experience with animals, so hiring themselves out at pet sitters seems like the perfect solution to their money woes. When their friend, Captain Targus, is called away on business, the girls get the job of going out to Mason’s Island everyday to look after his cat, Rascal.
The island, which is a half hour’s boat ride from Mahone Bay, where Emmie and Angela live, is owned by the old ferryboat captain but used to be home to a small fishing community. After moving out there to keep a rather forlorn cat happy, the girls decide to explore Mason’s Island in hopes of finding pirate treasure. What they uncover, instead, is evidence of illegal activity. Marooned on the island after an unsettling encounter with a scar-faced intruder, and an overheard conversation that suggests their lives might be at risk, the girls must decide whether to remain on the island or strike out for the mainland in a leaky dory.
Danger at Mason’s Island is the second Angela and Emmie Adventure by Tom Schwartzkopf, and is sure to capture the attention of readers from Grades 3 to 6. The third book in the girls’ adventures, Trouble Twins Save Christmas, was published in September 2007.
FernFolio Editor

Shadows on the Train by Melanie Jackson

fernfolio — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 15:37:01 +0000

Dinah Galloway is looking forward to travelling with her friends, Pantelli and Talbot, across the country to Toronto to appear on the television show Tomorrow’s Cool Talent. At twelve years old, Dinah is loud, tactless and very inquisitive, but she possesses a magnificent singing voice, one that will one day make her a star. With her older sister, Madge, and her agent, Mr. Wellman, coming along as chaperones, Dinah anticipates lots of fun, even if Pantelli is obsessed with trees, and Talbot with history, and even if her beautiful and accomplished sister has gone all gooey over her upcoming wedding to Jack.
However, just days before their departure, a strange little chain-smoking man shows up at the Galloway house. Ardle McBean has just finished a seven-year prison sentence, and has come to collect the king Dinah’s father has been keeping for him. The problem is, Dinah’s father has been dead almost seven years, killed in a car crash, and Dinah’s mother has no idea what Ardle is talking about. She calls the police, and Ardle takes off. But Dinah remembers another visit from Ardle, one made just weeks before her father’s death, and recalls talk about a king. She feels a grudging sympathy for the soft-talking ex-con, and starts to look for the king, which Ardle has assured her is worth $80,000. With Talbot’s and Pantelli’s help, Dinah locates her father’s belongings in the attic of the house, but cannot figure out what Ardle means by the king. Things get complicated when Ardle is hit by a car and winds up gravely injured in hospital, and someone tries to break into the Galloway house.
The trip by train from Vancouver to Toronto is filled with mystery and adventure. An alarming number of shady characters board the train as passengers, and it isn’t long before someone shoves Dinah into a laundry bag and demands that she turn over the king. As Talbot, Pantelli and Dinah learn more about the king, and begin to track down where it might be hidden, people begin to suffer strange accidents and to disappear. With her flare for the dramatic, Dinah manages to create a mess of operatic portions before the train pulls into Toronto’s Union Station.
Shadows on the Train is the fifth book in Melanie Jackson’s Dinah Galloway series, and is sure to be popular with readers who enjoy mysteries with a liberal dose of comedic relief! It’s hard not to like Dinah, who rushes into danger, yelling all the way, but whose heart is soft enough to exact revenge for her lovelorn sister and to help out a six year-old who has lapsed into silence. An entertaining read!
FernFolio Editor

Endymion Spring by Matthew Skelton

fernfolio — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 00:52:26 +0000

Blake Winters is not happy to find himself in Oxford, dragged there by his mother who is doing research in the ancient libraries its university colleges. He misses his father, who has remained in Canada, and worries that his parents’ separation will lead to divorce. Accompanied by his younger sister, Duck, Blake spends hours in the library at St. Jerome’s College, under the sometimes watchful eye of its librarian, while his mother works on her research.
One day, as he idly runs his fingers along the spines of the books, a book reaches out and swats at Blake. Take aback, the boy picks up the book from the floor where it falls, and notes it is a small and ordinary-looking on the outside, that it bears the name, or title, Endymion Spring, and that its pages appear to be blank. Then, as he flips through the book, he comes across a single page of writing, a riddle, one that his rather annoying little sister does not seem to be able to see.
Blake is immediately drawn to the book, which nestles into his hand and has revealed a secret riddle to him and him alone, and contemplates, briefly, slipping the book into his backpack and taking it with him. When he later meets a kindly old former professor of his mother’s, Blake asks the question that has been burning in his mind since his strange experience in the library, “What is Endymion Spring?” His words so shock and trouble the old man, that Blake begins to realize that the nondescript little book is potentially very dangerous and that, if it fell into the wrong hands, could cause unimaginable disaster. But, when he returns in secret to the library to find and take the book, the Blake discovers that the library has been ransacked. Could someone else be looking for Endymion Spring?
Slowly, the story of Endymion Spring, a small brown leather-bound book and the name of a young apprentice to Johann Gutenberg, inventor of the first printing press, is revealed. In 1452, the young Endymion is living happily in the household of his master Johann Gutenberg, when Johann Fust, a mysterious and rather sinister old friend of Gutenberg’s, arrives to stay bearing a wooden chest carved with dragons and sealed with metal clasps which Fust claims will poison anyone who attempts to break them. Awakened one night by the sound of talking, Endymion spies upon Fust and his servant Peter, and stumbles upon Fust’s terrible secret, one that so frightens him that he realizes he will have to sacrifice all that he has and is to steals the contents of the wooden chest and hide them where Fust and his minions will never find them.
Matthew Skelton’s Endymion Spring is a wonderful adventure about a book that chooses an ordinary young boy as its champion in the battle between good and evil. It intertwines the Oxford of the present day with the medieval towns of Mainz and Oxford, and captures wonderfully both the ancient city of colleges and spires, and the sights and sounds and tastes and smells of 15th century Europe. This book is sure to appeal to fans of Harry Potter and Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials!
Fern Folio Editor