This is it, Nikki fans! Nikki and Snooper are back for a fourth adventure in the Nikki Landry Swamp Legends series and this time they are investigating some strange pre-historic sightings on Lost Lagoon! Beautifully written and illustrated by the talented Rita Monette, this series is one not to be missed!
Legend has it… if you go onto Lost Lagoon, you never return.
Nikki Landry and her friends are off on a quest to track down the prehistoric-looking bird that’s been flying around a nearby swamp island. However, their plans get sidetracked when they meet a stranger in their small town who seems to have some secrets to hide.
The sleuthing group soon learns of a legend about a hidden lagoon. Is it all connected? Before they can find out, they are kidnapped by a mysterious scientist on a mission of his own.
Is there any truth to the legend that says if you go onto Lost Lagoon, you will never return? Is the eerie whirlpool that sits waiting to suck you in really a passage to another world?
Join Nikki, her friends, and one neurotic parrot, as they discover the truth behind the Mystery on Lost Lagoon.
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Book Details:
Age Level: 6-12
Publisher: Mirror World Publishing; 1 edition
Publication Date: November 17, 2017
ASIN: B076TVWSZ7
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Purchase from Mirror World Publishing
Read an Excerpt:
The August air was steamier than a pot of boiled crawfish. Tiny bugs danced like fairies on the gumbo-colored bayou. Cypress trees on a nearby swamp island dipped their moss-draped branches into the still water, trying to stay cool. I had been sitting in my new tree house for days, trying to catch a cool breeze and pondering on how to turn a plain old fort into an official club house, when I decided what it needed most of all was furniture. My friend Spikes had come over to help me build some. He was pretty good with tools.
“I saw that strange bird again.” Spikes stood beside me with a hammer in his hand.
“What bird?” I asked, busy with trying to arrange some old boards in the shape of a table, just before they collapsed into a heap. “Drats!” I folded my arms in front of me.
“You have to lay them on the floor, Tomboy,” he said. “We need to nail them together first.”
“So you have to build it upside down?” I wiped the sweat off my brow with the back of my hand.
Spikes’ real name was Spencer Sikes, but I’d never heard nobody call him that ’cept for his grandpa. He was twelve years old, a whole year and a half older than me. I couldn’t imagine being almost a teenager. Me and him argued a lot, but we always stayed friends. He told me once he only liked me ’cause I wasn’t like other girls, and could climb trees, and didn’t mind getting dirty. He sometimes called me Tomboy instead of my real name, Nikki.
He grinned, showing his broken front tooth. “Yeah.”
“We need some nails.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of bent nails. “I was over at my grandpa’s yesterday. We took a boat ride out to Flat Lake, and I saw it flying around Pelican Pass, see.”
“Saw what?”
“The bird.” He sounded annoyed. “You know, the one that makes that screeching sound. The same one we saw over in Mossy Swamp.” He sat on the floor and began straightening the nails by laying ’em on their sides and tapping ’em with his hammer.
We had gone out to Mossy Swamp back in June trying to find out about a legendary monster, when we saw a big bird swoop down and make a horrible noise. Spikes had been bringing it up ever since…and I had been trying real hard to ignore him.
“Oh yeah.” I twirled the hair at the end of my braid. “The one you said looked like a dinosaur or something.”
“A pterodactyl,” he added. “Actually, the real name is pterosaur, see, which is a species of flying reptiles. So technically it isn’t a bird at all.”
“Why do you read all that stuff?” I sat on my bare heels across from him.
“It’s just interesting.” He squinted at me like it should be something I should be curious about.
Spikes was not very good at school work, and barely passed his classes, but he loved to read when it was something that caught his interest. In fact, he could become pretty darned obsessed on a subject he liked, usually ghosts or pirates. Seemed his new obsession was prehistoric creatures.
“So, what about it?” I asked, stacking my boards to the side. “I ain’t caring about no reptile-looking bird, unless it was to come after me or my dog.”
“I watched it fly in and out of the pass near Rabbit Island. I think it must have a nest near there,” he said, still banging on his nails. “And actually…according to a book I got from the library…their average wing span can get a little over twenty feet.”
“How big is twenty feet?” I asked, still not much caring as long as it stayed in the swamp where it belonged.
He looked around, then pointed. “Oh, longer than your houseboat, there.”
I poked out my lips. “You’re telling a fib, Buzzard. It wasn’t that big at all.”
“Well, it might just be a young one,” he said, “and you know what that means?”
I didn’t answer. He could go on and on forever, like he had something caught in his craw.
Buzzard was a nickname I gave him on my first day at Morgan City Elementary. He looked just like one sitting up on that great big branch of the coolest tree in the school yard. It was our first argument, on account of I had already claimed that branch for my own lunch spot. He learned real quick that I wasn’t the type to give things up that easy, and since nary one of us like to be called names, we only did it to annoy each other. Sometimes we could go for days using each other’s rightful names.
“That means its mama might be lurking around out there in that swamp, see.” His eyes got real big, like he actually wanted it to be so.
I gazed at him sideways. “Spikes you do know those things are extinct, don’t you? Miss Allgood taught us all about the dinosaurs last year. She said they’ve been gone since the Ice Age. That means it got too cold for ’em to survive. So there.”
“Well, I ain’t saying it is prehistoric or anything.” He nailed the boards together. “I just said it looks like one.”
“Oh, I see. Well, it’s probably just a big pelican anyway. Hey, can we stand the table up yet?”
“Not yet. We need braces on these legs so it won’t fall down. Go over to Nana’s shed and get me a couple smaller boards while I straighten some more nails out.”
Meet the Author:
Behind Every Legend Lies the Truth!
Rita Monette was born and raised in Southwest Louisiana. After retiring from her “real” job as an administrative assistant for the State of Michigan, Rita began doing what she always wanted to do…write and draw. Her stories are set in the beautiful, yet mysterious, bayous and swamps of her home state. The Mystery on Lost Lagoon is the fourth book in her Nikki Landry Swamp Legend series, which is based on her childhood. Rita now lives with her husband, four lap dogs, and one lap cat, in the mountains of Tennessee.
Connect with Rita:
Website:
http://www.ritamonette.com
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/RitaMonetteBooks/
Amazon US:
https://www.amazon.com/Rita-Monette/e/B00APOURBI/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1508786247&sr=8-1
Goodreads Author Page:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6580833.Rita_Monette
Blog:
http://ritamonette.blogspot.ca/
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