About this item
"A bold, big-hearted start to a groundbreaking new series." - Soman Chainani, author of The School for Good and EvilThe New York Times bestselling author of the Seven Wonders series and books in the 39 Clues series, Peter Lerangis, brings us the enthralling first installment of the Max Tilt trilogy. When thirteen-year-old Max Tilt happens upon his great-great-great-grandfather Jules Verne's unfinished, unpublished manuscript, The Lost Treasures, he doesn't realize that he's found the answers to all his problems. And Max has a lot of problems - his mother is sick, his father is out of work, and his home is about to be foreclosed on. But when Max and his cousin Alex discover that Verne's last work reveals everything he wrote was fact, not fiction, they realize that the book holds the key to something incredibly valuable. A treasure that can save his house - and maybe his entire family.But Max and Alex aren't the only ones who know about Verne's clues. Spencer Niemand, a strange skunk-haired man who has spent his life researching Verne's works, is bent on reshaping the world with the hidden treasure. To find it first, Max and Alex must go on an adventure that'll take them from the broken remains of an underwater city to the very jaws of a giant squid to the edges of a whirlpool from which no one has ever emerged alive. This is the first book in a new hair-raising, edge-of-your-seat adventure series from master storyteller and New York Times bestselling author Peter Lerangis.
About the Author
Lerangis's work includes The Viper's Nest and The Sword Thief, two titles in the children's-book series The 39 Clues, the historical novel Smiler's Bones, the YA dark comedy-adventure novel wtf, the Drama Club series, the Spy X series, the Watchers series, the Abracadabra series, and the Antarctica two-book adventure, as well ghostwriting for series such as the Three Investigators, the Hardy Boys Casefiles, Sweet Valley Twins, and more than forty books in the series The Baby-sitters Club and its various spin-offs. [1] He has also written novels based on film screenplays, including The Sixth Sense, Sleepy Hollow, and Beauty and the Beast, and five video game novelizations in the Worlds of Power series created by Seth Godin. [2] As a ghostwriter he has been published under the name A. L. Singer. [3]Lerangis is the son of a retired New York Telephone Company employee and a retired public-elementary-school secretary, who raised him in Freeport, New York on Long Island. He graduated from Harvard University with a degree in biochemistry, while acting in musicals[4] and singing with and musically directing the a cappella group the Harvard Krokodiloes,[5][6] before moving to New York. He worked there as an actor[7] and freelance copy editor for eight years before becoming an author. [8]In 2003, Lerangis was chosen by First Lady Laura Bush to accompany her to the first Russian Book Festival, hosted by Russian First Lady Lyudmila Putina in Moscow. [9][10]Authors R. L. Stine (Goosebumps) and Marc Brown (the Arthur the Aardvark series) also made the trip with Bush. [9]Also in 2003, Lerangis was commissioned by the United Kingdom branch of Scholastic to write X-Isle, one of four books that would relaunch the Point Horror series there. [11] A sequel, Return to X-Isle, was published in 2004. In 2007, Scholastic announced the launch of a new historical mystery series called The 39 Clues, intended to become a franchise. [12] Lerangis wrote the third book in the series, The Sword Thief, published in March 2009. [13][14][15] On March 3, 2009, Scholastic announced that Lerangis would write the seventh book in the series, The Viper's Nest. [14][16]Lerangis lives in New York City with his wife, musician Tina deVaron, and their sons Nick and Joe. [17]
