Batten down the hatches!
The pirates are coming!
The Curse at Pirate’s
Cove, the second installment in the Nikki Landry Swamp Legend series, is due to
be released next month, on November 17.
It was previously
scheduled for October 17, but was postponed due to unforeseen problems.
But Nikki and her
friends know exactly what the problem was…it was those pesky pirates…and the
curse. Yes, they’ve been at it again.
Here’s a description of
the book and what’s going on with Nikki in book two:
“When one man’s treasure
is another one’s curse.”
Nikki Landry is turning
eleven years old, and is looking forward to riding her bike to school. That is
until it falls apart. Papa can’t afford a new one. Is she doomed to ride the
smelly old school bus from now on?
Hearing of an old pirate
ship, and a legend about long-ago pirates burying treasure on a nearby swamp
island, Nikki sees a way out. But when she makes a birthday wish for the
pirate’s gold, things go terribly wrong. Did her wish trigger an ancient curse?
Join Nikki and her
friends as they find themselves sailing away aboard a haunted schooner with
ghostly pirates into the Gulf of Mexico … and into the year eighteen
fourteen.
How will they ever find
their way back home?
Here’s an excerpt from
the book:
“It has to be, Nikki.
Listen.” He turned toward me. “I was out at Uncle Luke’s this past weekend, and
he told me all about it.”
“I ain’t believing
there’s no pirate ship out in those swamps.” I lifted my chin.
“Just hear me out,
Tomboy.” He sounded impatient. “There’s a legend that goes along with it, see.”
He leaned toward me and lowered his voice. “There might even be a curse.”
“A legend?” He had my
attention. I prided myself in being a super legend buster ever since I solved
the one about Ghost Dog Island last year. I even got my picture in the
newspaper. “Well, tell me about it.”
“I’m trying to.” He
waved his hands in the air.
We propped ourselves
against a couple of large limbs and got out our lunch bags.
“Uncle Luke says he
first heard about it back when he was a kid. He says a friend of his
grandfather, by the name of Beco, was out trapping on Fog Island with his buddy
Clamare. They came across this here hole in the ground with a half-buried
wooden chest, see. It had a big old lock on it. There was a couple of coins in
the dirt, so Clamare picked them up and slipped them in his pocket. Beco
decided he’d go back for some tools and shovels to dig the rest of it out, and
told Clamare to stay there and watch the chest. On his way out to the edge of
the island, he saw this ragged old ship. Thinking it was kind of odd looking
for being in the swamps and all, he got a little closer. It had a broken mast
and raggedy sails.” He poked me with his elbow. “When was the last time you
ever saw a fishing boat with sails?”
I shook my head.
“Never.” I unwrapped a peanut butter and jam sandwich and took a bite. “What’d
he do?”
“Well, he started to
board it, see?” Spikes dug into his own lunch bag. “But then he heard some
talking coming out of the boat. He stopped right then and there, ’cause he
didn’t know who might be on that old wreck out in the middle of nowhere, and
there weren’t no other boats around. This one had a big old hole in the hull,
so it couldn’t have sailed there on its own. At least anytime in recent
history.”
“Then what?” I licked
some of the jam off my fingers.
“Then someone stuck his
head up over the bow, see. He had on one of them three pointed hats that
pirates always wore. Old Beco yelled a big hello, and the man took out a pistol
and shot over his head. Well, Beco took off right then and there. That night,
he went down to T-Noon’s bar and got drunk, and told some other fellows about
it. The next day, they all went back out to the island with shovels and brought
guns just in case that crazy guy in the boat was still there.”
“Was he?” I asked.
“Nope. The ship was
gone, and so was Clamare.”
“What about the
treasure?”
“They never could find
it. Not even the hole it was in.”
About the author:
Rita Monette was born
and raised in Southwest Louisiana. She loves to write stories set in the
beautiful, yet mysterious, bayous and swamps of her home state.
Her middle grade series,
The Nikki Landry Swamp Legends, is based on tales told by her father, who made
his living in those bayous.
She currently lives with
her husband, four lap dogs, and one lap cat, in the mountains of Tennessee.
Besides writing and illustrating, she loves watching the many birds that
inhabit the Cumberland Plateau.