Books with author Ridley Pearson

It's supposed to be a happy day at the Magic Kingdom—the return of the teenaged holographic hosts. But things go very wrong when a sudden lightning storm disrupts the celebration, and Amanda's mysterious sister, Jez, disappears. The only clue is the sighting of a wild monkey in the Magic Kingdom during the storm. The mystery deepens as Finn is contacted by Wayne, an old man he hasn't heard from in months. Wayne tells Finn that there's trouble at the Animal Kingdom: the evil Overtakers have gained control of one of the computer servers that will be used to operate Daylight Holographic Imaging there. That means that if any of the holographic hosts fall asleep, they will go into comas—permanently. Filled with action and brimming with the same meticulous detail as The Kingdom Keepers: Disney After Dark, this second book in the series—Disney at Dawn—is the result of hands-on research behind the scenes at Disney’s Animal Kingdom Park. Young and older readers alike will get a glimpse into a second Disney kingdom. The wild rides have only just begun; and the clock is ticking. How long can the teens keep themselves awake in their quest to find their friend—and what happens if they fail?

When Disney Imagineers installed hologram guides for the Magic Kingdom using teenage models, they had no idea the technology might backfire. But backfire it did: some nights when the kids go to sleep, they wake up in one of the Disney parks as a hologram. With the adventures in the first books now resolved, Kingdom Keepers III: Disney in Shadow follows the five teens-Finn, Philby, Willa, Charlene, and Maybeck-as they search to find Wayne, their mentor and head Imagineer, who has mysteriously gone missing. Concerned that Wayne has been abducted by the Overtakers-Disney villains, who along with other Disney characters, take over the parks when the turnstiles stop spinning and who want desperately to steer the parks to a far darker place-the five kids pick up a majorclue from their close friend whose dreams (nightmares, really) often accurately predict the future. Clues from a dream lead the kids into Disney's Hollywood Studios and Epcot. Each clue seems tied to the last, and with the stakes growing ever higher, what starts out as a puzzle ends up as a fight for survival. A transparent paper box, a quest for a sword, rides on Soarin' and Maelstrom, life-and-death encounters with a giant snake and a devious Maleficent lead the Kingdom Keepers not only to begin to decipher deeper meanings to the clues but to discover new truths about themselves and their ever-growing friendships.

Steven "Steel" Trapp has been placed in an East Coast boarding school for gifted kids by his FBI agent father. He soon discovers that there's a clubby element of the faculty and upper classmen that is very secretive and protective. To his surprise, his friend Kaileigh arrives at the school, and it isn't long before the two realize that this is not your normal boarding school. It seems a select few students are recruited, while still minors, to serve as special "translators" for the US Government.

FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND LIBRARIES ONLY. The Kingdom Keepers' senior year in high school is almost over. For more than three years, things have been quiet. Their battles are long behind them, they agree, the threat to the Disney realm silenced albeit at great cost. But inside the catacombs of the Aztec temple where Finn Whitman faced down his nemesis, the monstrous Chernabog, a new threat brews. Deception and betrayal rock the Kingdom Keepers as the merciless group of Disney villains known as the Overtakers stage an unexpected comeback. But a discovery by the Keepers provides them with one hope of victory-a lost icon. It was believed to be gone forever. The Keepers have one last chance to preserve the heart of the Kingdom-Disneyland-from a terrifying destruction decades in the making.

One summer morning while Aidan and Sarah are visiting their grandfather, they discover a secret compartment in his battered wooden desk. Inside is a yellowed envelope that contains a piece of very thin, almost translucent, white paper, on which, handwritten in black ink, are a series of seemingly random lines; among them are what appear to be fragments of letters, but not enough to make sense. At the bottom of the page is a verse about Peter Peter and a reference to a real hotel in London. As it happens, the family is about to embark on a trip to Europe, so the children decide that while in London, they will try to locate the hotel.

Steven “Steel” Trapp has been placed in an East Coast boarding school for gifted kids by his FBI agent father. He soon discovers that there’s a clubby element of the faculty and upper classmen that is very secretive and protective. To his surprise, his friend Kaileigh arrives at the school, and it isn’t long before the two realize that this is not your normal boarding school. It seems a select few students are recruited, while still minors, to serve as special “translators” for the US Government. People—including diplomats and dignitaries—will say things around kids that they wouldn’t otherwise dare speak outside of embassies. The willing student “agent” takes a semester abroad and ends up spying for his country.But there are dark forces at play at the school. Foreign agents may have penetrated the school’s secrecy and have sleepers in place: kids spying on future kid spies. There is conspiracy and competition among the elite faculty that threaten security. As Steel and Kaileigh are recruited for their first test run—trying to break a ring of pickpockets in a Boston hotel—things go impossibly wrong. Betrayal and conspiracy cloud what should have been a straightforward assignment. And all too soon, their very lives are in danger.

In this riveting thriller, 14-year-old Steven "Steel" Trapp sets off with his mom and their dog, Cairo, on a 2-day Amtrak journey to compete in the National Science Competition in Washington, DC. Steel is both blessed and cursed with a remarkable photographic memory--just one look and whatever he sees is imprinted for keeps. Trying to be a good Samaritan on the train, he instead becomes embroiled in an ingenious, international plot of kidnapping and bribery that may have links to terrorists. Federal agents (first seen in Pearson's adult thriller, Cut and Run) track Steel and his new-found science geek accomplice, Kaileigh Augustine, as they attempt to put together the pieces of a complex puzzle. Using Steel's science contest invention--and with the help of Cairo--Steel and Kaileigh lead readers on an action-packed chase adventure as they attempt to prevent the unimaginable, before it's too late.

FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND LIBRARIES ONLY. Disneyland, Opening Day, 1955..When five present-day teenagers known as the Kingdom Keepers find themselves thrown into a past that would make anyone envious, things don't exactly work out the way they'd hoped. Finn, Charlene, Maybeck, Willa, and Philby open a door into a place and a time when the legend of the Disney parks is just starting. They are there, in 1955, to retrieve Walt Disney's infamous pen that once saved the parks as we know them. But like all things Disney, nothing is as it seems..The early days of the Tower of Terror, the origin of the Overtakers (Disney villains), and the real power of magic unfold in an unexpected series of events that propel both the Keepers and Disney itself into a darkness no one saw coming. Along the way, the Keepers visit Walt Disney's hilltop home, Disneyland's opening day and reception, and find themselves separated from friends sixty years away. The three Fairlies, young women in Disney's School of Imagineering, girls with astonishing powers of their own, have unmasked a long-buried secret that threatens the lives of their friends as well as everything Walt Disney worked for.