Books with author Lee Smyth

The Strangest Tale You've NEVER Read:Weird things happen during wars. One of the strangest tales you've never read is how the richest kid in France teamed up with a teenage slave to help win America's Revolutionary War. (And it's true.) Spies & Lies (+ Tons of Money): Lafayette was nineteen when he arrived at General George Washington's "front door step" (his military tent) and basically said, "Put me in, coach, I'm ready to play." Washington didn't need another soldier with a quick trigger finger. He needed money, and Gilbert Lafayette had inherited tons of it. Washington signed him up.For the final member of his team, Washington wanted someone who was a really good liar (especially when a gun was pointed at him). And he found him: James Armistead, a teenage slave. The Kid Who Fooled Them All: Everyone assumed that James Armistead was a Black boy who couldn't read, write, or add a column of numbers. But the kid fooled them all (and he even spoke French)!Pretending to be a runaway slave, Armistead became a servant for the commander of England's forces, Lord Cornwallis. All the while, he risked his life to supply General Washington and Lafayette with details about British strengths, weaknesses, and troop movements. Gilbert Lafayette and James Armistead weren't very good at following rules, but they were terrific at getting results for General Washington. They dodged death, lied when they had to, and lived extraordinary lives. Their motto? "Cur non?!" - "Why not?!"

TEASER:There's more gold, silver, and jewels on Treasure Island than a hundred men could spend in a hundred lifetimes. Jay and his sister Maddie know exactly where it's hidden.There's only one problem: They're not the only ones who want it all.And there's only one question: Is getting rich worth getting knifed in the back?SUMMARY: Robert Louis Stevenson's classic features a young boy as the main character. This new version has two narrators, a twelve-year-old boy and his ten-year-old sister.In Treasure Island you'll meet ...- A seemingly brainless parrot who knows a lot.- A man of God – who's not.- A cook who might be stirring up a mutiny.- A brother and sister who must depend on each other to stay alive.- A French-speaking kid named Voodoo whose best buddy is a nine-foot-long python he calls Muscles.- A colorful crew of pirates (Death Grip, Hammerhand, Twitchy, Tats, Stump, and No Nose) who are better at slitting throats than trusting each other. Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island contains a boatload of words like "coracle" and "foc'icle." He wrote the book in 1883 when most people in England lived and worked near shipping ports. They didn't need a dictionary to understand his novel. Times change. It's time for the new Treasure Island.

TEASER: Franky Stein recently turned twelve. His parents have assured him that he can talk to them about anything. Well, anything except the zipper-shaped scar on the back of his dad's neck, Grandpa's exact age, and what's hidden in the garage freezer.Think you've got problems? They're nothing in comparison to Franky Stein's.- His father is Frankenstein.- Most of the family swears that frozen pus is delicious.- Gramps works at a morgue where a lot of body parts are missing. SUMMARY: Love is in the air in Nebraska. Franky's French teacher (Mr. Lefevre) wants to say "I do" to Mary Shelley as soon as possible, but she wants to be as far as possible from the smells of Wahoo (where pigs outnumber people). Basketball coach Kat Krootch knows it's now or never to make some major moves on the suddenly eligible Lefevre, but her ex isn't ready to let her go. Krootch and her Harley Davidson are retrieved – both frozen, both perfectly preserved – from the local lake. Franky's grandfather, who works at the morgue, is instantly smitten. He fires up the Spark-O-Matic and the corpse lurches back to life inside the Stein family's garage. Shockingly, Krootch decides that Grandpa isn't her type. Crackling with energy, she steals a wedding dress and makes a full-court press on poor Lefevre during his wedding. Who's going to save the day and kick some major butt while doing so?Frank N. Stein, Jr., that's who. Armed only with what he can scavenge from the back end of a pet ambulance, Franky must battle Krootch's ex as well as "Bridezilla" herself. And what does our hero have to say about all of this?Bring 'em on!

WHITE SCAR, THE SHIP WRECKER is a fast-paced re-imagining of Melville's Moby Dick. There's no need for the reader to have a nautical dictionary at his side and it can be read during a weekend.Moby Dick is a very thick book: it's 650 pages of small print and is as much of a whaling manual as it is a novel. But – and there's always a "but" when people talk about Melville's epic – you'll rarely meet anyone who hasn't heard of Captain Ahab, Ishmael, and the great white whale. At its heart, the novel contains an unforgettable story and, even better, great questions: what does God want, what does He demand, and how should we react when the "old man" whispers in our ear?WHITE SCAR contains those same classic characteristics but is in tune with 21st century readers.

MIDAS is Goldfinger for a new generation of thrill-seeking readers; it's "James Bond" for a 21st century audience.The mythical King Midas killed the only thing he loved, his tiny daughter. A single touch turned her into gold.Julian Midas, the villain of this novel, has re-written the legend: everyone he hates, dies. And then turns into the only thing he loves, gold. At the age of twenty-four, Midas is the world's youngest billionaire. He's also the craziest. No one lives after being touched by his machine. Britain's MI-6 Secret Service desperately wants to stop Midas's killing spree, so it dispatches its best spy, a man named Dekker, as well as a fifteen-year-old video-game fanatic named Mac. But they're in for quite a surprise: Midas can't wait to meet them.

AUDIENCE: Teens, video-game fanatics, anyone who needs a laugh.TEASER: Cars, catapults, and cow pies. Need we say more?SUMMARY: It's summer in Wahoo, Nebraska, and everyone is obsessed with playing a video game named Car Wars, lassoing dead pigs that float past on the river, and catapulting cow pies at each other. Maybe building a medieval weapon of mass destruction is going too far, but Max, Baz, and Ali love to take it to the MAX.VIDEO-GAME TIE-IN:Max and his friends can't stop playing a video game named Car Wars. Every outrageous act from the game is copied by psycho-classmate Roger Watley, who has built a catapult that hurls some very gross things. Max decides that there's only one solution: confront Roger with a medieval weapon of mass destruction once used to toss dead cows into castle courtyards.The Car Wars video game is fully loaded with a cast of crazies:- Julian Caesar (an evil military leader).- The Crusher (who turns cars into crumpled Coke cans).- Doctor LeStrange (a warlord who wears suits made from cat fur).

AUDIENCE: Cat lovers, cat haters, and video-game fanatics.VIDEO-GAME TIE-IN: Total Catastrophe is the name of the novel as well as the video game our young heroes can't stop playing. TEASER:Your principal says you're lying.Your friends are freaking out.When life's a total catastrophe, play games!SUMMARY: Total Catastrophe (also known as "Total Cat") has two twelve-year-old heroines as well as two female villains. And weird cats, which are part of both the main story line and the video game (Total Catastrophe) that the kids of Wahoo Middle School are obsessed with. The villains in our story aren't just determined, they're vicious. They use lies like switchblades and see truth as an inconvenient obstacle that must be kicked aside.“Glee-less Gleason” (the new principal) and Maggie Quinn (age twelve, Mrs. Gleason's hand-picked helper) know that gaining respect takes time. Fear works faster.Our middle-school heroines are Emma Pratt and Samantha James. Em is unfairly accused of cheating by the principal, then has an award stripped from her while the entire school watches. Sami's nemesis is classmate Gerald Ferguson, who has cheated his way into the drool-worthy status of being a super-GoG. She's certain that Gerald isn't worthy of this honor but she can't prove it – not yet.Gerald's not satisfied just to humiliate Sami during video-game competitions; he trashes her reputation. And Principal Gleason isn't content with obedience, she demands trembling subservience.But Em and Sami are tougher than they look. They bow to no one. Together they're determined to restore their reputations and reveal the true character of their accusers.Curriculum Tie-In: Arthur Miller's classic play The Crucible (about girls who are unfairly accused of practicing witchcraft) is being studied in Sami and Em's English class.

Tel's Odyssey is a re-imagining of Homer's Odyssey told from the viewpoint of Odysseus's twelve-year-old son, Telemachus ("Tel"). With no knowledge of how Odysseus triumphed over the Sirens, Circe, Cyclops, or Scylla and Charybdis, Tel must devise his own solutions while searching for his father. SETTING: Ancient Greece, one year after the end of the Trojan War.SUMMARY: During King Odysseus's absence, Ithaca has fallen under the control of a group of escaped prisoners known as the Damnati. They're the worst of the worst, all eternally damned. Their leaders are Lykos the Wolf and Zenzes the Unredeemable. Both want to kill Tel before he can claim the throne or find his father, then they plan to force Queen Penelope into marriage.Several of Odysseus's most trusted companions from the Trojan War – Ajax, Three Toe, and Two Blade – safely arrived on Ithaca's shores even though their leader did not. But with the Damnati in control, they're forced to live on the streets. Worse, Lykos the Wolf has neutralized the effectiveness of Ajax, second only to Achilles among the Grecian warriors, by blinding him. These three bond with Odysseus's twelve-year-old son Tel while searching for their missing king. After reuniting with a father he barely remembers, our young hero must rush home to Ithaca to save his mother from a forced marriage, then defeat the Damnati.

ONE-SENTENCE SUMMARY: Principal Fry and Coach Downey live to smack down the students of Wahoo Middle School, but it’s a major mistake to mess with Max, Baz, and Ali, the Righters of Wrongs.AUDIENCE: teens, video-game fanatics, anyone needing a laugh.SAME FLAVOR AS: Louis Sachar’s HolesTEASER: Robin Hood was cool in his day. Move aside, dude, the RoW can handle it.SUMMARY: Max, Baz, and Ali are the Righters of Wrongs at Wahoo Middle School. These modern-day Robin Hoods return confiscated yo-yos and iGamers to their rightful owners.After every raid by the Righters of Wrongs, Mr. Fry fortifies his fortress with additional locks, chains, and even bars (over the ventilation ducts). Are the members of the RoW crazy or inspired when they attempt a raid on the Command Center during broad daylight? VIDEO-GAME TIE-IN: Max and his buddies can't enough of a video gamed named Take It to the MAX.

Imagine being sixteen years old and having the power of life and death over twenty million people. Even better, imagine that THEIR money is YOUR money.All this is your reality if you're King Louis XIV. The boy-king of France loved spending other people's money; it was the one thing he was exceptionally good at.But what if you're Louis's identical twin? You're the boy in the iron mask, and your brother, the king, will never allow you to leave the Bastille prison alive.BOY IN THE IRON MASK is an easy-to-read re-imagining of Alexandre Dumas' outrageously long French classic. The action and intrigue in this version never slow. Swords and daggers (and let's not forget wire garrotes) lie hidden under every cape.

Why change a classic? Ask any kid who has read even three pages of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Twain's writing style seems ancient and his vocabulary is, at times, impossible. And then there's the problem with the 219 times we encounter the n-word.Twain's original novel contains 303 pages of small print. It's too long (110,668 words) even for many patient adults.This new version contains no racial slurs and it's TWAIN WITH A TWIST: Huck and Jim take turns telling us what really happened during their trip down the Mississippi.

AUDIENCE: teens, video-game fanatics, anyone who needs a laugh.TEASER: It's not everyday that a cute girl flirts with you during a funeral and then wants to hang out at your prom.CAPSULE SUMMARY: Max, Baz, and Ali are now seniors at Wahoo High School. They've been best buds since 8th grade, but Baz's half-sister wants to hang out with them at the prom. It's time for Max and Ali to decide, is this a crush or are we a couple?SUMMARY:Max and Baz have been smitten with Ali since middle school. Baz's half-sister (Phylly) is making some serious moves on Max. It's time to choose or lose. Grammy Evie complicates everyone's lives by performing a high-velocity nose dive into a potted plant; neither she nor the plant survives. No one knew that she loved high-stakes poker, had a Canadian email address, or a closet devoted to flamboyant hats with foot-long feathers. Did Grammy gamble away the deed to her home?Prom decorating is being supervised by Cecil Augustus Burdy, whose tastes exceed Wahoo High's budget. Coaches Downey and Kroeger are in charge of maintaining strict decorum in the hallways and even stricter morality. Whispers of mutiny are growing louder.Max, Phylly, Baz, and Ali decide to gamble on some desperate schemes to save their prom. They know that sometimes you have to Take It To The MAX.VIDEO GAME TIE-IN:Everyone at Wahoo High is addicted to a new video game named Choose or Lose, which forces the players to make some insanely difficult choices. The game's neo-Nazi stars are Fraulein Krow, code name Raven, and Dr. Wulfstein, code name Wolfie. Both look and act a LOT like the hall monitors that Max and his friends face each day at Wahoo High.