Is there a creepy creature lurking in Mossy Lake? Is an evil plot stirring? Is something shocking happening to Caitlin’s cat Zappy—and can he be de-zapped? Would-be scientists and detectives will want to slip into their lab coats, dust off their test tubes, and get on the case with Drake Doyle and Nell Fossey. Hint: to find the answers, kids will have to use such scientific principles as buoyancy and static electricity.
Michele Torrey first became a published author at age ten, when her story about a dinosaur egg popping out of the kitchen sink appeared in the Seaview Heights Elementary newspaper. Her fifth grade class, located in Edmonds, Washington, wrote, edited, and published the newspaper.
While Torrey has lived most of her life in Washington, she has traveled throughout the world. As a child, she lived overseas in England and France, and spent most of her junior high and high school years in Heidelberg, Germany. At the age of four, she lived in Cockfield, England, where she first attended grammar school. She remembers the handbell calling the children in from recess, the morning's recitation of the Lord's Prayer, hot custard for lunch, and the bratty girl Rosemary who stuck out her tongue at Michele and got a spanking for it. When Torrey temporarily moved back to the United States and her classmates asked how English people spoke, she promptly responded in all seriousness and with a thick country accent, "Cheerio, ol' chap!" All in all, Torrey spent ten years of her childhood overseas. She returned to the Seattle area in her senior year, after which she completed a degree in microbiology and immunology from the University of Washington.
For the past sixteen years, Torrey has explored the depths of her imagination while writing novels for adults, young adults, and middle-grade. Her books include the CHRONICLES OF COURAGE seafaring series for middle-grade (Knopf), and the DOYLE AND FOSSEY: SCIENCE DETECTIVES chapter book series (Sterling). She is a two-time Thurber House Residency in Children's Literature nominee, plus a two-time winner of PNWA's Zola Award. Among other honors, her books have been chosen by the Junior Library Guild, named by VOYA as "Top Shelf Fiction for Middle-Grade Readers", and nominated for the Sakura Medal. Most recently, her book VOYAGE OF PLUNDER was a WA State Book Award finalist. Torrey is a regular presenter at writers' conferences and schools. She lives in South Bend, Washington, with her husband. They have three grown sons, two granddaughters, and a calico cat.
In addition to her writing and traveling, Torrey is a director and co-founder of Orphans Africa, a 501 c 3 nonprofit charity (www.orphansafrica.org). Orphans Africa works primarily in Tanzania, building boarding schools for children orphaned by AIDS.
