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Once again Charles Oliver Jones is smack in the middle of two mysteries, and this time the threat is serious enough to force his father into hiring a security service from Boston, headed by the strange and dangerous Orsen Castonguay. Those of you who have followed Charlie Jones through the first three books will not be disappointed, as this tale fairly bristles with action and suspense.

It starts with a visit from a most astonishing guest: the don of the Boston Mafia who says he has retired to the Vineyard and wants to hire Charlie to protect him from an Amok he claims to have seen in Menemsha. Then suddenly a bunch of “federal” agents turn up trying to recover the papers that belonged to Abby and Henry Waters.

On top of this is the fact that Pete and Charlie are just about to play for the state football championship in their class with a chance to finish the season undefeated.

The excitement and pressure has all the guys ready to run amok. Only Charlie has retained his cool and somehow he has to find a way to get them calmed down enough to play. Even Pete is affected and unless he can get his head into the game, they’re doomed.

Hubbell Parks is smart, an accomplished guitarist, and absent minded. He’s also growing fast, which means his coordination is a little iffy at times. He’s also one of five kids in his family, caught between two older brothers, who are star athletes, and two much younger sisters.

So far he’s been content to just stay in the background and go his own way. Then his brothers sign him up for the school talent contest and tennis lessons to help him improve his coordination. They have a plan. They have never been able to beat Hub at horse. He just stands in one place and drains long, three-point shots, and they’re in need of a three-point shooter on the basketball team.

And in the middle of all this, a mystery arises, and the guy who’s been targeted asks Hub for help. He provides it, but in a most unusual way. This is another fast and funny book from Robert Holland, crammed with sports and mystery that will keep you reading.

Charles Oliver Jones and Pete Heyward are back for a third time in this highly acclaimed series set on Martha’s Vineyard.

This time the mystery begins with a strange collection of jetsam drifting ashore on the beach near Gay Head Light and only slowly does it become clear that it’s part of a terrorist plot directed at the whole country.

Even with the island crawling with Homeland Security, F.B.I., and military professionals, in the end it falls to Charlie and Pete to figure out just what is going on.

It’s also right at the height of the football season and Pete and Charlie are tearing up the pea patch with some able help from Charlie Dollarhide. This is a hard book to put down as the action rages from page to page, chapter to chapter the suspense building and building as the mysteries slowly unravel and keep on unraveling right down to the final page.

In this novel, Robert Holland is at his very best and what that amounts to is great fun for his readers.

Gustavas Adolphus Skimmer has always thought of himself as an ordinary guy and he has plenty of evidence. He’s a perpetual third-stringer on every team and though he makes honors grades, he has never made high honors.

Yup, just an ordinary Gus. And then, a week before the start of his senior year he decides to make a change. Because if he is, as his mother says, a descendent of Swedish kings, then he’s also descended from the Norse Gods and someone like that ought to be able to do anything ... with hard work.

He begins with a trip to the gym at the college where his parents teach, determined to improve his basketball skills and that leads to a horrifying discovery in a storage locker in a building near the gym.

Suddenly Gus is up to his ears in a mystery even as he is learning how to fly on the basketball court.

It’s summer in New Hampshire and Tom Hobson is playing with his dog, Bucket, on the front lawn when the shooting breaks out on the dirt road downhill from the house. A lot of shooting, twelve ... fifteen shots, big-bore, semi-auto and all Tom can do is drop onto the ground and keep down.

When it stops he goes to have a look and Bucket bursts from under the proch, crashes into Tom and sends him tumbling down the hill and into the road and into a mystery full of bad guys, guns, and bombs. And, just to sweeten the mix, there’s baseball and fishing and a very fast boat.

Mrs. Parks calls on Charles Oliver Jones, to investigate noises around her house at night because the police can’t spare anyone as the summer season draws toward Labor Day.

On a damp, foggy night, while staking out Mrs. Parks’ lonely house at the end of a long dirt road, Charlie makes an astonishing discovery, one that seems to make no sense. In fact if it weren’t for the slashes in his Ninja suit, he would have been tempted not to believe what he had seen.

This, the second in the Charles Oliver Jones series is another page turner. Between his investigation into whatever it is that comes out on foggy nights at Mrs. Parks, to his sudden emergence as a wide receiver on the football team, this book will keep you engaged from start to finish.

As always, with any Robert Holland novel, there’s no predicting how things will turn out. What you can be certain of if, is that you’re going to have a lot of fun with Charlie and his partner, Pete Hayward as they roam the Vineyard in search of what shouldn’t be there at all.

Harley Keene is the new guy in town, but he’s used to that because for the past three years he’s been in a new town and a new high school every year. He spends his summer shooting pool at a local pool hall called Shorty’s and when he’s not doing that he’s working on his three point shot because even when you play point guard you have to be able to shoot.

When school starts in the fall, he begins to hear all sorts of stories about some guy called Snake and then he winds up in Calculus, sitting directly behind the guy that everybody says is the nastiest guy in town.

And then one night when he’s picking up pizza for his family he sees a man robbing another man in the alley next to the pizza place.

That murder becomes another murder and then another and Harley is right in the middle of it, just as he’s starting the basketball season and getting ready for a pool tournament, even as he begins to learn more and more about the guy called snake

Charles Oliver Jones fancies himself a private investigator and, in fact, he has solved a couple of small mysteries, much to the surprise of both his parents and the Chief of Police. But Charlie has also been wearing a trench coat and an old brown felt like the private eyes of old.

That has pretty much set him apart from the rest of the kids at school, and as any strange behavior will do, has left him on the outside looking in.

But at the beginning of summer a new mystery arises when his next door neighbor dies and Charlie begins to think she was murdered. He enlists his old friend Pete Heyward, who lives three houses away, to help solve the mystery, but Pete, who is also the starting quarterback at the high school, agrees only after Charlie says he’ll give up the hat and coat.

Strange things begin to happen. Mobster enforcers turn up and then come the spooks, government men working for obscure agencies, men with strange ideas and even stranger methods.

The question is what they are looking for and it’s a question only Charles Oliver Jones can answer.

When you begin to think that one of your best friends is a car thief, it causes problems, lots of problems. And when your baseball team has lost six in a row and can’t seem to do much of anything right, well, you end up with a lot of stuff on your mind.

But Alex Warfield is not the kind of guy who takes whatever life dishes out without fighting back and suddenly, during what looks like another loss, he decides to take a risk and that changes the team and their season.

It still doesn’t settle Alex’s worries about his friend, Brad, but Alex wouldn’t be Alex if he didn’t find some way out of that dilemma too ... no matter how many bad guys show up.

Crossing the River is the best Robert Holland book yet. The book is suspenseful and action-packed with the main character, Deke, having to overcome a bully named Mountain Moran and an older golfer at his club, who will go to any length to win the club championship. Who would have thought that golf could cause life-threatening problems? Well, it does in this book, twice.

And there’s horror too. Ghosts. And they provide a scary twist. Lastly, this book is inspiring because of its moral. The title comes from a quote, "An army that has crossed the river cannot turn back." What that means to Deke is that he has to take a chance to reach his goals.

What the book shows is that if you cross the river and strive for something better, then anything is possible.

For most of his life Rob English, who lives on Martha's Vineyard, has been the shortest guy he knew. Because of that, and because he can't run very fast, he has never played sports. And then he starts to grow. In the fall of his senior year he is five foot four and by the time the novel opens in March he has grown to six foot two and he is still growing.

That doesn't make him an athelete, except that Rob has some hidden talents. He is an expert fly fisherman and he can throw one stone into the air and hit it with a second stone. Only now when he does that, he throws so hard that he breaks the second stone. It is a talent that carries over, allowing him to throw a baseball with astonishing speed and accuracy. That he is a lefty is only a bonus.

But one day while he is fishing, some strange pieces of wood wash up on the beach. They are pieces from a boat's hull, and it looks as if they are the remains of an explosion. And then a body washes up. . .

It is 1793 in Woodstock, Conn. and Stoddard Chandler has finished his schooling and been accepted at Yale. The only trouble is that he hasn't told his father he won't be working on the farm. It is a confrontation he dreads.

And then General McClellan's thoroughbred stallion is stolen and the Theft Detecting Society with Stoddard bringing up the rear, takes up the chase only to surrender their pursuit, when it becomes clear that the only chance of getting the horse back lies with Eben Stroud.

When Stroud singles out Stoddard to help him it begins an astonishing summer for young Mr. Chandler. Under the tutelage of Eben Stroud he learns to track and stalk and to shoot with exceptional skill. He also witnesses the depths to which humans can sink.

The book is told in three stories: Eben Stroud, Why Charity Phillips had to Die, and the Witch at Kerner's Cross, all of which occur during the summer of 1793, a dry summer with drought threatening the crops and shortening every one's temper.

And then Reverend Pell from the East Parish, once again raises his flock against the Witch at Kerner's Cross. Only Stoddard Chandler stands in their way.

Damon Foxrucker can flat out throw a football but because he's a freshman, and because his coach doesn't believe in passing, the chance that he'll get to show what he can do looks pretty slim. Still, he's determined to find a way, even if it means going behind the coach's back.

He's got some other problems too. He's got a big mouth, especially in class, which explains why he spends a lot of time in the principal's office. And then too there's the matter of not only finding a date for the prom, but finding someone to double date with because for sure he doesn't want his parents to drive him.

Help comes from a strange quarter in the form of Larry the Rat, a chemistry whiz with the highest grades in the school and a knack for blowing things up.

When the Rumble Brothers expand their drug selling operation, Damon and Larry decide to do something about that too. All in all it makes for some exciting and even tragic times in good old Wally's Falls.

Harry Jensen is tall and skinny, he's got huge feet, and he's second in his class. He is not, as you might expect, one of the popular people, unlike his best friend Kerry, who is not only first in their class, but also an All-State shortstop.

And then, in the summer before his junior year, while shooting hoops in his driveway, Harry discovers that he can sink a jump hook time after time. He still can't dribble, his jump shots are bricks, and he's still skinny as cornstalk, but those are things he can change. All it takes is hard work and the same sort of determination he's poured into his studies. Suddenly he has a new goal: making the Jayvees.

Then one night Kerry discovers a web site showing two guys who have always been outcasts in the high school. Both of them are carrying guns, but worse, are the threats they make. While most of the kids think it's all just bluster and bluff, nothing more than some sick joke, Harry takes the threat seriously.

The more he discovers, the more certain he is that this group poses a real danger to the kids in the school. But not even the cops believe that. They think it is nothing more than the work of a bunch of braggarts.

One morning in November they find out.

Mad Max Murphy is a soccer player. More to the point he is a goalie and everybody knows that goalies are a little, well, they're just different. But even beyond his goalie attitude, Max is different. Things happen when he is around, odd things, strange things.

Even his friends are different, in particular Basil and Meg Greene, the son and daughter of Lord and Lady Greene who have relocated to Madison where Max lives.

Mix this is with the summer soccer league, two headless bodies, some russian missiles, and a missing vial of something from Plum Island where the government fools with all sorts of nasty viruses and bacteria, and you've got a formula for excitement.

Nick Rivers is a ballplayer with a strong sense of injustice and when he discovers that a great many people in town think that his neighbor, an inventor named Augustus Bede, murdered his wife, despite the fact that he was never brought to trial, Nick decides to set things straight.

But the murder occurred over forty years before and Nick faces a cold trail and the anger of the people who still believe that Augustus Bede murdered his wife. The question is whether he did and what might happen if Nick uncovers the real murderer but still can't prove it, because then he ends up with an enemy who is already a murderer and has nothing more to lose.

On a summer day Maria, Peter, and Brian Bell set out to explore the land around their new home in the country. In the woods at the far edge of the big hay field behind the house, they find an abandoned car and decide to make it into a fort.

From the start, things about the car seem odd. There are bullet holes in one side, but not the sort hunters make in using abandoned cars for target practise. These holes are all in a line. And there is an odd dark stain on the back of the driver's seat.

From their neighbor, a retired farmer named Walter Barbour, they learn that the car once belonged to a hired killer named Little Louie LaMontaigne, who was shot in that field by the gang members he'd had a falling out with, fifty-eight years before.

But things get stranger still. There is a raven that watches them and at times almost seems to speak. And there is the matter of the money Little Louie had with him, money stolen from his former partners, but never recovered. And there is the matter of Little Louie himself, for the body was never found ... until now ....

Asa and Ike live on Kidd's creek, less than a mile apart. Those are the only two houses on the creek which stretches for miles through wide salt water marshes. Their plan is to dig enough quahogs to buy dirt bikes.

But for anyone living near Kidd's Creek, there is always the question of whether Captain Kidd, as legend has it, buried the remains of his pirated gold somewhere in the marshes. No sooner do they start to look than they discover a strange albino camped out on the High Ground, digging holes everywhere.

They begin their search in earnest; a search that takes them deep into the marshes, into a cave full of surprises, and pits them against the albino and his partner, Fishbone Watson, in the rush to find the gold of Captain William Kidd.

Eddie Phelps is a thirteen-year-old hockey player with no slap shot and then one day, walking home from school he takes a shot at a horse chestnut lying on the sidewalk and drives it through a classmate's window. That begins a strange transformation as Eddie discovers he is descended from a long line of Druid healers.

He discovers powers he never knew he had. He discovers that he has the power to heal even the most desperate of injuries and diseases. In the process he also discovers that having such extraordinary powers may not be very easy to live with, no matter how great a slap shot you develop.

The only practical way in or out of Bear River, Maine has always been by canoe or bateau over the river. And then the paper company builds a road and everything begins to change.

For 16-year-old Jared MacBurron the road is his door to the future, but it also brings the unexpected when the first car to reach the village is a prizefighter looking for a payday. For while there have always been prize fights in Bear River, they were mostly between the men who worked in the logging camps. The winner of each fight became the champion of Bear River and got to stay on in the small village until someone tougher came along.

But with the road comes a professional boxer at the end of his career. And the one thing Jared wants to learn above anything else is how to box.

The Dollarhides live in Aquinnah on Martha's Vineyard, among the Wampanoags, who have allowed them to buy an old house on tribal land because Charlie's father is a full-blooded Mohawk. George Dollarhide works as a highly skilled cabinet maker and raises range chickens for some better restaurants on the island.

Charlie runs... fast, and even as a freshman he makes the track team which helps a lot in getting along with other kids because Charlie is still short and skinny and while he may have the warrior heart of his Mohawk forebears, he's still some distance away from being ready to go on the warpath.

But for everyone in the family, life on the vineyard holds substantial promise until their next door neighbor, Albert "Tall Owl" Martinson, is murdered and the police arrest Charlie's father.

Only Charlie seems capable of solving the murder because only Charlie knows who killed Mr. Martinson. The problem is that he doesn't really know, only that every now and then the hackles stand up on the back of his neck.

For the Harrisons, Aaron and Clay and their mother, it started out as a vacation on Cape Cod where they had gone to escape the polio epidemics, which in 1948, spread quickly in crowded places during hot summers.

The silver gray cottage had no running water and no electricity and it sat alongside an old barn on the edge of a huge marsh with no other houses nearby. It was perfectly peaceful, though Aaron thought it was also pretty boring.

That changed on their first day when a fighter fell out of the sky. And later, when they explored the barn, things got even more interesting as Aaron and Clay made a series of strange and dark discoveries.

And then there arose the matter of the mysterious George Bean who moored his boat in one of the small tidal creeks near the cottage. And always there were the growing number of mysteries in the barn, which Aaron and Clay sought to explain, even as danger drew steadily closer.