Books with author Cynthia Defelice

One morning Tyler MacCauley's father wakes up next to a dead man, gathers his family, and flees New York. For the next five and a half years, the MacCauleys see few people who don't call the Florida swamp home. Then, in 1906, within days of each other, two strangers show up at the MacCauley settlement on Lostman's River. The first offers Tyler's father a job killing birds for their plumes and alligators for their hides, and is turned away. The second asks thirteen-year-old Ty to be his guide through the area, on what he calls a scientific expedition. For three dollars a day, enough to ease his family's poverty, Ty agrees to accompany the "strange little man." The expedition sets in motion a series of events that make Ty question his own values, wonder about degrees of treachery, and worry about the future of the place he has grown to love. And it forces the MacCauleys to confront their greatest fear...

A tribute to Florida, fishing, and familyAll Skeet Waters wants is to catch a big, beautiful tarpon on his fly rod - and to keep everything else in his life in Florida the way it's always been. But on his spring break from school, Skeet overhears his mother telling his father to move out permanently. Then, while riding in his boat to escape his parents' troubles, he discovers a manatee that's been shot in the head. Skeet puts aside his search for the manatee and its killer when Dirty Dan the Tarpon Man offers to take him out to catch his first tarpon on a fly. Because of Dan, Skeet begins tounravel the mysteries surrounding the manatee's apparent murder and his parents' dissolving marriage.Skeet discovers that life is a lot like tarpon fishing, in which you can't look just at the surface of the water - you have to look through it, at what lies beneath.

A tribute to Florida, fishing, and familyAll Skeet Waters wants is to catch a big, beautiful tarpon on his fly rod - and to keep everything else in his life in Florida the way it's always been. But on his spring break from school, Skeet overhears his mother telling his father to move out permanently. Then, while riding in his boat to escape his parents' troubles, he discovers a manatee that's been shot in the head. Skeet puts aside his search for the manatee and its killer when Dirty Dan the Tarpon Man offers to take him out to catch his first tarpon on a fly. Because of Dan, Skeet begins tounravel the mysteries surrounding the manatee's apparent murder and his parents' dissolving marriage.Skeet discovers that life is a lot like tarpon fishing, in which you can't look just at the surface of the water - you have to look through it, at what lies beneath. The Missing Manatee is a nominee for the 2006 Edgar Award for Best Juvenile Mystery

One day while running on the trail near his house in upstate New York, Owen McGuire meets a girl with startling green eyes and bloody cuts all over her body who seems to be utterly alone. Her name is Campion, after the wildflower that is an alien species in the area—alien meaning “from someplace else”—and Campion claims to come from someplace else entirely, a planet called Home. She plans to signal her parents to come pick her up in their spaceship. Owen agrees to help, and as he does, he feels happier than he has in a long time: his mother died a year and a half ago, and now he and his workaholic father live together like two planets on separate orbits, in a new house far from his friends. What will he do when Campion asks him to come with her into outer space, away from his lonely life on Earth? In this moving novel, two friendless kids search the night sky for something to believe in—but discover that they’ve found what they need right here on Earth.

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.

A New York Times Bestselling Author All Skeet Waters wants is to catch a big, beautiful tarpon on his fly rod - and to keep everything else in his life in Florida the way it's always been. But on his spring break from school, Skeet overhears his mother telling his father to move out permanently. Then, while riding in his boat to escape his parents' troubles, he discovers a manatee that's been shot in the head. Available only in The Literacy Bridge 5.

Taken from: the website of cynthiadefelice The Ghost and Mrs. Hobbs by Cynthia DeFelice A sequel to the award-winning The Ghost of Fossil Glen. the Story Just a few short weeks ago, sixth grader Allie Nichols encountered her first ghost, the spirit of a murdered girl named Lucy Stiles. Now another ghost has enters Allie’s life! Her best friend, Dub Whitwell, says Allie must be “some kind of ghost magnet.” The new ghost appears to Allie as a handsome young man, and points her in the direction of Mrs. Hobbs, the scary cafeteria lady. Allie has always suspected that a terrible experience accounts for Mrs. Hobbs’s strange behavior. Could Mrs. Hobbs have killed the handsome young man? Allie’s life becomes complicated as she tries to help lay her ghost to rest. For one thing, mysterious fires seem to break out wherever she turns. Dub is mad at her, and even her teacher’s dog doesn’t want anything to do with her. Soon she is in danger, along with her little brother – but from whom?

For nearly fifty years Jessamine Colter has chronicled the life of her small town through the elegant calligraphy that she provides for church posters, restaurant menus, school diplomas, notices of birth, marriages, deaths. And in young Callie Williams, who shares her passion for "fancy writing," Jessie has found an almost-daughter to love, train, and protect. But then Jessie discovers that she has been given the power to know the future, to write about events before they happen. It is a gift that brings pleasure but also heartache to her and to Callie.