Books in LeGarde Mysteries series

Summer, 1964: Beatlemania hits the States, and the world mourns the loss of JFK. For eleven-year-old Gus LeGarde, the powerful events that rocked the nation serve as a backdrop for the most challenging summer of his life. After Gus and his best friends capsize their boat at his grandparents’ lakeside camp, they witness a drunk chasing a girl through the foggy Maine woods. She’s scared. She’s hurt. And she disappears. The camp is thrown into turmoil as the frantic search for Sharon begins. Reports of stolen relics arise, including a church bell cast by Paul Revere. When Gus stumbles on a scepter that may be part of the spoils, he becomes a target for the evil lurking around the lake. Will he find Sharon before the villain does? And how can Gus--armed only with a big heart, a motorboat, and a nosy beagle--survive the menacing attacks on his life?

When Gus LeGarde agrees to play piano for the high school drama club's production of "Spirit Me Away," a sixties-style musical he wrote in college, he doesn't expect to face a series of menacing pranks played on his fiancée Camille and the drama club. Who's sabotaging the show? And what do they have against Camille? Is it sex-crazed Armand, the Latino teen infatuated with her? Something happened last year that Camille won't talk about, and it has to do with Armand. Gus wants to know what happened, but she's not talking. Could it be Superintendent Marshall, whose past holds horrific secrets related to one of the worst crimes of the 20th century? And why did someone break into Camille's home to steal her intimate undergarments and her beloved mini-dachshund, Boris? Gus must unravel the mystery before the backstage saboteur stakes his final, deadly claim.

The Genesee Valley is in chaos. Strangers drive panel vans through the countryside at weird hours of the night. A new batch of drugs is on the street, endangering students. The local salt mine collapses due to illegal mining practices. Gas fires burn in water wells. Watering holes turn to brine. Crops are dying. Tempers are short. Forest fires threaten. To top it off, the new mine lies directly over ancient Indian burial grounds, bringing anguish to local tribes and inciting riots at the mine site. As if that weren’t enough, Gus LeGarde’s country church is hit by a rogue tornado, revealing the bones of a missing parishioner and devastating the dead man’s wife. Days later, heroin is found in Gus’s elderly minister’s bloodstream after his car crashes into a tree in the dead of night. When Gus is thrown into the middle of the madness, he knows life has finally gone berserk in East Goodland, New York. Join Gus as he’s lured into a bizarre network of underground tunnels to expose the most shocking discovery ever to rock the Genesee Valley.

Lady Candling lives next door to Pip and Bets, and owns some very expensive, pedigree Siamese cats. When her most famous cat, Dark Queen, goes missing, the gardener's help, Luke seems the obvious suspect. Mr Goon and Mr Tupping, Lady Candling's gardener are sure he's the culprit, as he was digging by the cat house all alone when Dark Queen disappeared. The Five Find-Outers must solve the mystery to clear the name of their friend Luke. Strangely, Dark Queen soon reappears, dirty and tired, but unhurt. And stranger still, she disappears again a few days later, once more when only Luke could have done it. Piecing together clues of pale paint, turps and some wellington boots, the Five Find-Outers prove, once more with the help of Inspector Jenks, not only that Luke is innocent, but that Mr Tupping took Dark Queen and deliberately tried to frame Luke for the crime.Book Details:Format: PaperbackPublication Date: 1/1/2003Pages: 224

After four lonely years, music professor Gus LeGarde is still reeling from the death of his wife Elsbeth. To deal with the loss, he plays endless Chopin etudes on his piano and lavishes love on his grandson and dog, but nothing lessens the pain. Life spirals out of control when Gus heads for the snow-covered hills on an early morning skiing excursion to find a mute child shackled to a bedpost in a cabin. Gus rescues the child but the kidnapper, Baxter, escapes into the woods to stew in hot revenge. Unexpectedly thrown together with Camille, a social worker who takes the child into her own home, Gus falls hard. The first woman who’s stirred his soul since his Elsbeth, Camille is polite enough toward him -- but her own dark secrets have her pulling away despite the mutual attraction. When Gus’s little grandson goes missing, he fears the worse. Does Baxter have the little boy? Does he want to trade for the mute child? Gus braces for the fight of his life, struggling to protect Camille and his family before time runs out.

Every family has its secrets…Summer, 1966: For thirteen-year-old Gus LeGarde, summertime always means Loon Harbor, his grandparents’ idyllic fishing resort on Great Pond. The season is a grand tradition of swimming, boating, and new adventures with his best friends, twins Siegfried and Elsbeth. But this summer, everything changes when a new lodge down the shore threatens the resort—and triggers a chain of events that will transform Gus and his friends forever.Customers are leaving Loon Harbor in droves for The Seven Whistles, owned by the wealthy LaFontaines. The Baton Rouge family arrives with better amenities and a much larger staff—among them Wilhelmina “Willy” DuPont, a young black girl whose family works for the LaFontaines. Gus and the twins immediately bring Willy into their circle…but their friendship is soon challenged when events at The Seven Whistles take a terrifying turn.A mysterious figure haunts the windows of women and young ladies at both camps, escalating from peeper to dangerous stalker. Then the LaFontaines’ spoiled and demanding daughter goes missing—and Willy’s innocent older brother is arrested.Gus soon discovers that dark secrets lurk beneath the surface of the LaFontaine family, and the stakes are higher than ever imagined as they race to exonerate Willy’s brother and find the real perpetrator—before he finds them.