The Doldrums and the Helmsley Curse

Two months after their botched attempt to find and rescue his grandparents who, it is rumored, were abandoned on an iceberg in Antarctica, Archer B. Helmsley and his friends Adélaïde and Oliver begin to hear new rumors:

Rachel and Ralph Helmsley are alive and well and returning home to Rosewood.

The Helmsleys orchestrated their own disappearance.

The Helmsleys have lost their minds and are out to destroy the Society, an explorers' organization, to which they belong.

The Helmsleys have cursed the city with Antarctic-like weather.

Having not seen his grandparents since he was an infant, Archer is dazzled by them when they finally show up: "His grandparents were practically fictional characters to him. He'd read their journals. He knew their tales. They'd crashed planes in the desert and been lost in jungles. But now, here they were, two giants, stepping off the page and into the Helmsley House kitchen." Things go downhill quickly for the elder Helmsleys, though, when the Society votes to ostracize them. Archer and his friends, who only recently bonded in that ill-fated Antarctica expedition (see The Doldrums, Book One), find themselves delving deep into the mysteries surrounding his grandparents and the Society in hopes of salvaging the Helmsley family name.

In this wildly whimsical stand-alone sequel to The Doldrums, Nicholas Gannon once again thrills and chills his readers with the adventures of characters who could have stepped out of A Series of Unfortunate Events, The Invention of Hugo Cabret or Withering-by-the-Sea. Gannon's stunning colored-pencil drawings and black-and-white spot illustrations turn an exciting book into a complete package, perfect for readers who like their adventures mysterious and their mysteries adventurous. --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor

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