About this item

An SAT and ACT vocabulary-building program in the lively form of a mystery novel. Now students who take these entrance exams can learn more than 1,300 vocabulary words, improve reading comprehension, and enjoy a good story all at the same time. Includes exercises, glossary with page references.



About the Author

Charles Harrington Elster

Charles Harrington Elster is a writer, broadcaster, and logophile - a lover of words.

He is the author of the popular vocabulary-building program "Verbal Advantage" and its even more comprehensive companion program, "Word Workout," which is available both in print and in audio, narrated by Charlie. His other books include "Tooth and Nail" and "Test of Time," vocabulary-building novels for high school students preparing to take the college entrance exams; "There's a Word for It," a lighthearted look at unusual - and unusually useful - words; "What in the Word? " a salmagundi of word lore, wordplay, and advice on usage and pronunciation; "The Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations," now in its second edition, which the late William Safire of The New York Times hailed as "the best survey of the spoken field in years"; and "The Accidents of Style: Good Advice on How Not to Write Badly," which Constance Hale, author of "Sin and Syntax," called "useful, nuanced - and funny, too."

Charlie was a consultant for "Garner's Modern American Usage" and he is the pronunciation editor for "Black's Law Dictionary." He was a guest contributor to William Safire's "On Language" column in The New York Times Magazine, and his articles have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, the San Diego Union-Tribune, and other publications.

Charlie has also been talking about language on the radio since 1985. He has been interviewed on NPR's "Talk of the Nation," "Weekend Edition," and "All Things Considered" and been a guest on hundreds of radio shows around the country. For five and a half years he cohosted a weekly public radio talk show on language called "A Way with Words."

Charlie was born in New York City in 1957 and earned his B.A. cum laude from Yale in 1981. He lives in San Diego with his wife and two daughters.



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