Could the road to the afterlife be a two-way street? Reader reviews are in, and Tony Abbott is capturing the middle-grade fantasy audience with this new series!
Derek can't claim to be a normal fourteen-year-old anymore. Not after what he discovered at the Red House. His role in the war against the dead is more pivotal --- and more terrifying --- than he could have imagined. And so it all comes down to this. The Rift between the worlds of the living and the dead has to be closed . . . forever. It seems like an impossible task. And it rests squarely on the shoulders of a slightly overweight, not especially brave kid named Derek Stone. If Derek is ever going to become a hero, now's the time.
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Tony Abbott is the author of more than seventy books for young readers, including the popular The Secrets of Droon series, and was the recipient of the 2006 Golden Kite Award. Tony lives with his wife and two daughters in Trumbull, Connecticut. Visit him online at www.tonyabbottbooks.com.
To begin with, I was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and lived in a small house on top of a hill. Together, my mother, a school teacher, and my father, a returning World War II paratrooper pursuing his college studies, brought tons of books into our small house on Cliffview Road. I guess you could say that these books were my first introduction to the world of literature. My father was always writing, so the sound of the typewriter was like the background music of my early childhood.
When I was eight, we relocated, by car, to Connecticut where I finished elementary school and high school. I went to college at the University of Connecticut, majoring first in music (too hard), psychology (too many theories), and finally English (yes! lot and lots of books!). I graduated UConn with a bachelors degree in English Literature. After that, I traveled to Europe for quite a while, drank a lot of coffee, and wrote notebooks full of strange poetry. When I returned, I found work in a variety of bookstores and finally a library where I met my wife to be.
It was when I began reading bedtime stories to my children that the spark of writing I had had for so many years finally turned to children's books. After many failures, my first published book, Danger Guys, was written while taking a writing class with renowned children's author, Patricia Reilly Giff. That first book, and the series that it began, became the cornerstone of my writing career and has become something of a cult favorite, by virtue of its being difficult to find. Since then, I've written over seventy-five books for readers ages 6 to 14, including the cult favorit popular fantasy saga, The Secrets of Droon.
Over 8 million of my books have been sold worldwide, and my series and novels combined have been translated into Italian, Spanish, Korean, French, Japanese, Polish, Turkish, and Russian. Danger Guys was named a Children's Book-of-the-Month Club Main Selection, and the American Booksellers Association voted The Secrets of Droon among the "Top 10 List of Books to Read while Waiting for the Next Harry Potter." The series was also a Main Selection of the Children's Book-of-the-Month Club, and is on many school and library reading lists.
In 2007, my novel Firegirl won the Golden Kite Award for Fiction presented by the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. It is the only award given by children's writers to children's writers, a peer award I remain honored at having received. It was also a selection of the Junior Library Guild.
In the Spring of 2008, my second novel for Little, Brown Books for Young Readers appeared. The Postcard is a comedy/mystery about a boy who finds a clue on an old postcard while cleaning his recently deceased grandmother's Florida house, and who has no choice but to follow the mystery wherever it leads. Among other things, The Postcard is my love song to Florida's Gulf Coast, where my grandparents lived, and to old Florida, its architecture, roadside attractions, and Wild-West origins. It is, not least, my homage to the great hardboiled tradition of Hammett and Chandler, translated to a Florida setting. The Postcard won the 2009 Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Juvenile Mystery.
In 2009, The Haunting of Derek Stone, a series of four books for older readers, appeared from Scholastic Inc. Titles include: City of the Dead, Bayou Dogs, The Red House, and The Ghost Road.
My literary and cultural interests include the films of Preston Sturges, the Road pictures of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, and the Marx Brothers, and the writings of Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, P.G. Wodehouse, Jules Verne, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Seamus Heaney, Emily Dickinson, Ted Hughes, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Steinbeck, The Arabian Nights, Beowulf, James Thurber, Philip Roth, Ralph Ellison, and William Faulkner. I'm currently a member of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, the Yale Center for British Art, and other esteemed organizations. With my wonderful wife, two delightful and brilliant daughters, and the best dog imaginable, I live and work happily in Connecticut.
This review is from: The Ghost Road (The Haunting of Derek Stone, Book 4) (Mass Market Paperback)
This series amazed me. I devoured the four books, and was elated by the ending, but left wanting more in the story arc. According to the author's website, that might be possible. We can only hope there will be more books featuring Derek Stone. Derek always thought he was just a normal 14 year-old, but now he knows that is not so. He is being chased by dead people, reanimated by returned souls; he can hear them and feel their presence. He can see ghosts. Along with the reanimated body of his brother and a coma survivor, they are the last hope of humanity. But will he become evil to defeat evil, and will he sacrifice his humanity to save all of humanity? These are questions Derek struggles with in this the fourth book in the Haunting of Derek Stone Series.
These books were great, and they would make an amazing movie or TV mini-series. The story is compelling and highly addictive. You feel for the characters and realize the issues they are struggling with have deep personal consequences. All in all, the four books were riveting.
Tony Abbot amazed me with this series. I could not have told you his name, but I was aware of his series The Secrets of Droon, yet had not read any of them. The fact that he has over 70 books published means that if they are all the calibre of this series I have a lot of good reading ahead of me. Tony Abbott is most known for his Secrets of Droon series and his bestselling novels, Kringle and Firegirl. He is the author of over 70 books, many of which are now on my to-read list.
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This review is from: The Ghost Road (The Haunting of Derek Stone, Book 4) (Mass Market Paperback)
Derek Stone is not feeling like himself. Maybe that's because he just found out that he really isn't himself.
That's because when Derek was four and almost drowned in a pond, he really did. The soul of an ancestor, Ulysses Longtemps, translated into his body to wait for the time when he could fulfill his purpose. Which just so happens to be closing The Wound, a giant hole between this world and the next that will be reopened during a reenactment of the Civil War battle that killed Ulysses the first time around.
Plus, the reenactors have been translated into souls helping the Legion. All that Derek has to help him is a cryptic unfinished poem written by his ancestor/former self. Things aren't looking so good for Derek.
Derek is literally racing against time in this story, fighting to close The Wound before more people get translated. The Civil War reenactment backdrop is a thrilling setting, combining past with present in a spooky way.
THE GHOST ROAD, the fourth story in THE HAUNTING OF DEREK STONE series, is so exciting and surprising, I could hardly put it down!
Reviewed by: YoungBibliophile
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This review is from: The Ghost Road (The Haunting of Derek Stone, Book 4) (Mass Market Paperback)
I started reading the first book in this series a year ago, and I literally could not finish it. I've only read it half way through before I put it back on the shelf. I abandoned this series last year not because of its poor story or writing, in fact, the plot was so gripping that it genuinely creeped me out and gave me goose bumps. Now, a year later, with the added mental preparation that I lacked before, I was able to start the books all over again. I devoured all four of them at once, wishing for more.
*** SPOILER ALERT ***
For the longest time, Derek couldn't understand why fragments of a poem kept popping into his mind, and in the most inappropriate time. He also couldn't figure out who was the person who saved him from drowning ten years ago. The mystery was revealed in the most devastating way. Not only was he actually drowned when he was four, his mother was the one who pushed and held his head in the water. His mother scarified her own son just so his great-great-great-grandfather, Ulysses Longtemps, a civil war captain, could translate into his body and fight the foreseen evil Legion from taking over the upper world. Most importantly, she killed her own son so Ulysses could close the Wound again and forever.
However, in order to fight the rapidly growing Legion, Derek needed more bodies to be on his side. With the 4,000+ participants in a civil war re-enactment quickly translated by the Legion, Derek/Ulysses was urged to do the same. Time was running out. If Derek didn't allow the souls from his civil war troops to translate into those bodies, the Legion would grow into thousands by the end of the hour, and with the opening of the Wound, there would be no stopping them. But Derek didn't want to kill all those innocent people. He didn't want to fight evil from doing evil. He couldn't. Was there any other way? Would the ghosts army be sufficient enough to drive the Legion back? Would Derek be able to close the Wound once and for all?
*** END OF SPOILER ***
The story was so gripping that you could feel the dilemmas in which Derek was facing. I nearly cried out --NO! You'll doom us all!-- when he made the decision. Almost everything wrapped up nicely in this last book, well, almost. There are still a few unresolved situations.
What is to become of his father now that he has the book? His mother told Derek not to trust him, so who is he actually? Is his mother really dead? How and when did she die? Why is the poem so important? Above all, what will the First do now?
Maybe Tony Abbott will write the 5th installment to wrap those up. I'll be waiting to be creeped out again when he does. ;)
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