STAR Academy: Dark Secrets

Book excerpt: A charming, funny middle-grade novel that combines action, adventure, science, and a big dose of satire from a talented voice in children's literature. It takes a lot to get four kid geniuses together, even when they're all alumni of the now-shuttered Superior Thinking and Advanced Research Academy. Eleven-year-old leader-of-the-pack, Amanda Forsythe, needs to escape the cluthes of her manicacally entrepreneurial father, determined as he is to captialize on Amanda's fame for outsmarting a pair of aliens posing as teachers at the Academy. And Derek, Evelyn, and Sanjay are separately pursuing their own research projects in different schools around the world, desperate to continue the technological advances they began at the STAR Academy. Only the world's richest man could bring them all together--and that's exactly what George Snootman offers to do. But can they really trust the father of Eugenia, their nemesis at the STAR Academy? Probably not--but his offer is just too tempting. Besides, Amanda is pretty confident she and her friends can outfox him, even if he does seem as ruthlessly determined as the aliens before him to misuse their work for his own means....