Wisconsin author Shelley Tougas has covered issues spanning civil rights events to present-day battlefront action as well as creating touching stories for young tween readers. Her newest middle-grade novel, Finders Keepers, tells a light-hearted, captivating tale of two friends on the hunt for the lost treasures of gangster Al Capone. It all began when protagonist Christa learns that her family might have to sell their beloved summer cabin on Wisconsin’s Whitefish Lake. In order to save her family’s lakeside home now that her father is out of work, Christa must find the hidden loot fast, and with the help of her friend Alex and a cranky grandpa, she just might be able to pull it off. Tougas is the award-winning author of The Graham Cracker Plot, an entertaining young-teen story of friendship and overcoming adversity.
S.A. Bodeen’s latest, Lost, continues the intriguing storyline she began in her previous adventure Shipwreck Island, an engaging tween novel that was praised by School Library Journal as being “intensely readable.” In Lost, Sarah Robinson and her newly blended family must learn to survive on a deserted island with no rescue in sight. With food running out and fear escalating, the family must navigate through one unusual mystery after another. In addition to a number of picture books, Bodeen is the author of The Gardener and The Compound, which earned her a Bank Street Best Children’s Book of the Year award. Bodeen, who grew up on a Wisconsin dairy farm, is a graduate of UW-River Falls.
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Both authors will speak at Books & Company (1039 Summit Ave. Oconomowoc) at 2 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 19.
Book Happening:
Todd H. Green
7 p.m., Sept. 17
Tripoli Shrine Center
3000 W. Wisconsin Ave.
Luther College professor Todd H. Green is the author of the 2015 book The Fear of Islam: An Introduction to Islamophobia in the West and a regular contributor to The Huffington Post. He will be in Milwaukee for a lecture titled “Exploring the Causes and Consequences of Islamophobia.” This free event is co-sponsored by the Milwaukee Muslim Women’s Coalition and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
