Cynthia DeFelice

While coping with his parents' separation, eleven-year-old Skeet Waters spends most of Spring Break in his skiff on a Florida river, where he finds a manatee shot to death and begins looking for the killer.

The Missing Manatee

When her father kills himself after losing his money in the stock market crash of 1929, twelve-year-old Frances, now a penniless orphan, decides to hop aboard a freight train and live the life of a hobo.

Nowhere to Call Home

Erik is preparing for his first-ever hunting trip when he learns that his parents are being deployed to Iraq. A few days later, Erik is shipped off to North Dakota to live with Big Darrell and Oma, grandparents he barely knows. When Erik rescues a dog that's been stuck by a porcupine, Big Darrell says Erik can't keep him. But Erik has already named her Quill and can't bear to give her up. He decides to run away, taking the dog and a shotgun, certain that they can make it on their own out on the prairie. In this story of adventure and survival, Erik learns about the challenges and satisfactions of living off the land, the power of family secrets, and the pain of losing what you love.

Wild Life

The name has haunted my sleep and made my awake hours uneasy for as long as I can remember. Other children whisper that he is part man and part animal -- wild and blood-thirsty. But I know Weasel is real: a man, an Indian fighter the government sent to drive off the Indians -- to "remove them." Weasel has his own ideas about removal... Now that the Shawnees are dead or have left, Weasel has turned on the settlers. Like his namesake, the weasel, he hunts by night and sleeps by day, and he kills not because he is hungry, but for the sport of it...I know what I have to do. Weasel is out there. He could come here and hurt us. Maybe Pa can wait for the day when we'll have the law to take care of men like Weasel. But I can't...

Weasel

The third book about Allie Nichols, "ghost magnet" Allie Nichols has hardly laid the last spirit to rest when she's sure that another one is trying to reach her. But how can Allie help a ghost who won't speak? All she has to go on is a sound -- a sort of whine -- and a smell. At the same time, a strange boy joins her sixth-grade class. Allie doesn't understand why L. J. Cutler would start a new school at the end of the year, or why he's such a surly kid. She wants nothing to do with him. Then Mr. Henry, a teacher she loves, asks Allie to dog-sit Hoover, his golden retriever, while he's away and to befriend L.J. over the summer. She's delighted to spend time with Hoover, but she hardly looks forward to visiting L. J. Cutler -- until she discovers a connection between L.J., the ghost, and Hoover. This new book about Allie Nichols is another masterful novel of suspense by an author who consistently writes solid, entertaining stories.

The Ghost of Cutler Creek

When twelve-year-old Eric's parents are deployed to Iraq, he goes to live with grandparents he hardly knows in a small town in North Dakota, but his grandfather's hostility and the threat of losing the dog he has rescued are too much and Eric runs away.

"A middle-grade summer adventure about two boys who build an awesome fort and tangle with two older bullies."--

Fort

A Matter of Life or Death It's 1849, and twelve-year-old, Lucas Whitaker is all alone after his whole family dies of a disease called consumption which has swept through the community. Lucas is grief-stricken and filled with guilt. He might have saved his mother, who was the last to die, if only he had listened to news of a strange cure for this deadly disease. Unable to manage the family farm by himself, Lucas finds work as an apprentice to Doc Beecher, doctor, dentist, barber and undertaker. Doc amputates a leg as easily as he pulls a tooth, yet when it comes to consumption, he remains powerless, unwilling to try the cure he calls nonsense. Lucas can't accept Doc's disbelief, and he joins others in the dark ritual they believe is their only hope. The startling results teach Lucas a great deal about fear, desperation, and the scientific reasoning that offers hope for a true cure. The Apprenticeship of Lucas Whitaker is a 2008 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.

The Apprenticeship of Lucas Whitaker

Allie Nichols, "Ghost Magnet," has only just finished sixth grade, but already she's grappled with her fair share of adventure: three ghosts have sought her help in less than two months. Now that summer has finally arrived, Allie is ready for a break. Too bad ghosts don't know about summer vacation. When a new spirit causes Allie to babble incomprehensibly at rehearsals for her town's first pageant, she and her best friend, Dub, know they have another ghostly mystery to solve. But why does the ghost seem so interested in the pageant, which portrays the relationship between the area's early European settlers and the local Seneca Indians? And could its manifestation have anything to do with the rich girl who just came to town with her family? In the fourth fascinating ghost book by Cynthia DeFelice, Allie and Dub uncover a centuries-old secret—the destruction of a Seneca village at Poplar Point—and come up with a plan to share it.

The Ghost of Poplar Point

Allie Nichols, "Ghost Magnet," has only just finished sixth grade, but already she's grappled with her fair share of adventure: three ghosts have sought her help in less than two months. Now that summer has finally arrived, Allie is ready for a break. Too bad ghosts don't know about summer vacation. When a new spirit causes Allie to babble incomprehensibly at rehearsals for her town's first pageant, she and her best friend, Dub, know they have another ghostly mystery to solve. But why does the ghost seem so interested in the pageant, which portrays the relationship between the area's early European settlers and the local Seneca Indians? And could its manifestation have anything to do with the rich girl who just came to town with her family? In the fourth fascinating ghost book by Cynthia DeFelice, Allie and Dub uncover a centuries-old secret--the destruction of a Seneca village at Poplar Point--and come up with a plan to share it.

Sixth-grader Allie Nichols knows she’s being pursued by a ghost. Her friend Karen calls Allie a liar and doesn’t want to hear “stuff like that.” But her old pal, Dub, listens eagerly as Allie tells him about a girl who begs “Help me,” and a terrible nightmare in which that girl falls to her death. Who is the ghost girl? And what does she want from Allie?

The Ghost of Fossil Glen

When Ben overhears two men plotting to cheat in the annual Striped Bass Derby, he risks his life to stop them. By the author of Weasel. Reprint.

Devil's Bridge

September 1840 marks five months since twelve-year-old Nathan Fowler's life-threatening encounter with Weasel, the heartless man who stalked Nathan like a wild animal through the forest. Nathan hasn't been the same since, wary of every new person he meets - including the visiting peddler Orrin Beckwith. When Beckwith shows Nate and his family a handbill advertising a show with a "white Injun," a man without a tongue, Nathan is sure the man is his friend Ezra, who lost his tongue to Weasel's knife. Determined to save Ezra from this traveling show of "human oddities," Nathan sets out with Beckwith from Ohio to Pennsylvania. On the way, Nathan encounters more people than he's ever met before, and he begins to learn a thing or two about human nature. The biggest shock, however, is Ezra himself, and it will take more than Nathan bargained for to bring him back home.

Bringing Ezra Back

In this boys-will-be-boys summer story about friendship and revenge, eleven-year-old Wyatt and his friend Augie aren't looking for a fight. They're having the best summer of their lives hanging out in the fort they built in the woods, fishing and hunting, cooking over a campfire, and sleeping out. But when two older boys mess with the fort—and with another kid who can't fight back—the friends are forced to launch Operation Doom, with unexpected results for all concerned, in this novel about two funny and very real young heroes.

The sequel to Devil's Bridge At thirteen, Ben Daggett, a Martha's Vineyard local, takes a summer job as first mate on a charter boat and plans to spend the July Fourth weekend helping to entertain tourists. On his first day out, Ben spots a strange object in the water -- a red Porsche. Then he learns that the driver is missing! Donny, a cool sixteen-year-old, admits to having submerged the car -- but nothing more. Also a native, Donny resents the rich tourists, and even steals from them. Despite Donny's transgressions, Ben would give anything to hang out with him. Unfortunately, he gives too much, and ends up involved in drug dealing and maybe murder, and with full understanding of Donny's role in at least one of these crimes. Should he tell on Donny? In Cynthia DeFelice's exciting new adventure novel, the hero faces up to his own weakness and struggles to decide what to do about his friend.

Death at Devil's Bridge

A teenager discovers racism and romance on his father's farm For his fourteenth birthday, Joe Pedersen wants a motorbike that costs nearly a thousand dollars. But his mom says the usual birthday gift is fifty dollars, and his dad wants Joe to earn the rest of the money himself and "find out what a real day's work feels like." Angry that his father doesn't think he's up to the job, Joe joins the Mexican laborers who come to his father's farm each summer. Manuel, the crew boss, is only sixteen, yet highly regarded by the other workers and the Pedersen family. Joe's resentment grows when his father treats Manuel as an equal. Compared with Manuel, Joe knows nothing about planting and hoeing cabbage and picking strawberries. But he toughs out the long, grueling days in the hot sun, determined not only to make money but to gain the respect of his stern, hardworking father. Joe soon learns about the problems and fears the Mexicans live with every day, and, before long, thanks to Manuel, his beautiful cousin Luisa, and the rest of the crew, Joe comes to see the world in a whole different way. In her sensitive new novel, Cynthia DeFelice explores our dependency on migrant workers and simultaneous reluctance to let these people into our country and into our lives. Under the Same Sky is a 2004 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.

Under the Same Sky

The Ghost of Fossil Glen gripping ghost story and murder mystery by a popular and highly regarded author. Allie Nichols knows she's being pursued by a ghost. But her friend Karen calls her a liar and doesn't want to hear "stuff like that." It is Allie's old pal Dub who listens eagerly as Allie tells him about a voice that guides her safely down a steep cliff side, the face in her mind's eye of a girl who begs "Help me," and a terrible nightmare in which that girl falls to her death. Who is the girl? Is she the ghost? And what does the ghost want from Allie? As Allie discovers that her role is to avenge a murder, she also learns something about friendship, false and true, in the latest chilling tale from best selling author Cynthia DeFelice.

Cynthia DeFelice

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