New Releases by Sid Fleischman

Two exotic thrillers originally published in 1952 and 1963 by Gold Medal Books.

Welcome to Humbug Mountain. Little did Wiley, the son of a traveling newspaperman, imagine that the search for his grandfather would lead him into the hands of those nasty villains of the West-Shagnasty John and the Fool Killer. Using their newspaper, The Humbug Mountain Hoorah, Wiley and his sister and mother go about outwitting the outlaws in their scheme to ambush Grandfather''s new boat and its cargo of gold.

Though written in the 1960s, The Sun Worshippers is published here for the first time. Yellowleg is a western novel from 1960 which director Sam Peckinpah turned into the film, The Deadly Companions.

See him? That little tramp twitching a postage stamp of a mustache, politely lifting his bowler hat, and leaning on a bamboo cane with the confidence of a gentleman? A slapstick comedian, he blazed forth as the brightest movie star in the Hollywood heavens. Everyone knew Charlie—Charlie Chaplin. When he was five years old he was pulled onstage for the first time, and he didn''t step off again for almost three-quarters of a century. Escaping the London slums of his tragic childhood, he took Hollywood like a conquistador with a Cockney accent. With his gift for pantomime in films that had not yet acquired vocal cords, he was soon rubbing elbows with royalty and dining on gold plates in his own Beverly Hills mansion. He was the most famous man on earth—and he was regarded as the funniest. Still is. . . . He comes to life in these pages. It''s an astonishing rags-to-riches saga of an irrepressible kid whose childhood was dealt from the bottom of the deck. Abundantly illustrated.

How can a beautiful white elephant be a terrible curse? Run-Run, a young elephant trainer, discovers the answer when he incurs the fury of the prince. The boy''s punishment? The gift of an elephant, white as a cloud. From that moment forward, the curse reveals itself. According to tradition, so rare an elephant cannot be allowed to work for its keep. It is poor Run-Run who must feed the beast the hundreds of pounds of food it eats each day, and scrub it clean, and brush its pom-pom of a tail, and wash behind its ears, and, above all, keep it from doing any work. Oh, if only Run-Run could make the magnificent white elephant disappear! Clever as a magician, he does—but the curse has tricks of its own for Run-Run.

There is a bandit who comes in the night. He does not want pretty silver earrings or dangly gold necklaces, not diamonds or rubies. What does he want? Listen, I will tell you. He wants dreams. He is supposed to take only nightmares—the dreams of monsters and phantoms—but he''s grown scared. He''s been taking the good dreams instead. But one night he steals from the wrong girl. Susana is clever. She is wily. She is brave. And she wants her dream back.

One night The Great Freddie, a young ventriloquist, is possessed by a dybbuk. A what? A Jewish spirit. A scrappy demon who glows as if spray-painted by moonlight. The dybbuk is revealed to be the ghost of a twelve-year-old boy named Avrom Amos, a victim of the Nazis during World War II. In a plucky scheme to seek revenge, he commandeers The Great Freddie''s stage act and entraps the entertainer in the postwar ashes of Germany. Behind the footlights, the dybbuk lights up the terrible fate of a million and a half Jewish children, including Avrom himself. What tricks does the dybbuk have up his ghostly sleeve? Prepare to be astonished. . . .

"Mark Twain was born fully grown, with a cheap cigar clamped between his teeth." So begins Sid Fleischman''s ramble-scramble biography of the great American author and wit, who started life in a Missouri village as a barefoot boy named Samuel Clemens. Abandoning a career as a young steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River, Sam took a bumpy stagecoach to the Far West. In the gold and silver fields, he expected to get rich quick. Instead, he got poor fast, digging in the wrong places. His stint as a sagebrush newspaperman led to a duel with pistols. Had he not survived, the world would never have heard of Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn—or red-headed Mark Twain. Samuel Clemens adopted his pen name in a hotel room in San Francisco and promptly made a jumping frog (and himself) famous. His celebrated novels followed at a leisurely pace; his quips at jet speed. "Don''t let schooling interfere with your education," he wrote. Here, in high style, is the story of a wisecracking adventurer who came of age in the untamed West; an ink-stained rebel who surprised himself by becoming the most famous American of his time. Bountifully illustrated.

Annyrose Smith is a true child of calamity, but she is determined to overcome it. So what if she''s an orphan? So what if she''s stuck with the vilest landlady in California, while her brother''s off trying to strike gold? So what if Joaquín Murieta and his band of notorious outlaws swoop in and take her away? The fearsome bandit thinks Annyrose can help him in his quest for justice, and she thinks he can help her search for her long-lost brother. She''s not about to let anything stop her, not the mistaken identities, the daring robberies, the wild chases, or her unlikely friendship with the Mexican Robin Hood.

So begin the adventures of young Oliver Finch, born at the stroke of midnight. Believing that Oliver can spy out ghosts, Captain Scratch kidnaps him, bringing him aboard the notorious pirate vessel Bloody Hand. The ship sails the high seas in pursuit of the ghost of Gentleman Jack, who paces his grave where the pirate treasure lies buried. A despicable pirate captain, a mutinous crew, a band of sly sea ghosts—Oliver is determined to outfox them all and get safely home. It''s a tale of treachery, intrigue, and suspense!

Dredged up out of the sea after a storm, 12 year old cabin boy Shipwreck only wants to begin his long journey home. Instead he encounters snarling mutineers, barefoot bandits, hairbreadth escapes, duels, secret identities, simmering revenge, betrayals, heroic last stands, cunning innkeepers and hidden treasure.

Who was this man who could walk through brick walls and, with a snap of his fingers, vanish elephants? In these pages you will meet the astonishing Houdini—magician, ghost chaser, daredevil, pioneer aviator, and king of escape artists. No jail cell or straitjacket could hold him! He shucked off handcuffs as easily as gloves. In this fresh, witty biography of the most famous bamboozler since Merlin, Sid Fleischman, a former professional magician, enriches his warm homage with insider information and unmaskings. Did Houdini really pick the jailhouse lock to let a fellow circus performer escape? Were his secrets really buried with him? Was he a bum magician, as some rivals claimed? How did he manage to be born in two cities, in two countries, on two continents at the same instant? Here are the stories of how a knockabout kid named Ehrich Weiss, the son of an impoverished rabbi, presto-changoed himself into the legendary Harry Houdini. Here, too, are rare photographs never before seen by the general reader!

A swashbuckling tale of thievery and revenge The Giant Rat of Sumatra is the most notorious pirate ship in the Pacific. Its ferocious figurehead, a rat with crooked teeth and gouged-out eyes, strikes fear in the heart of every seafaring crew. Now the ship has dropped anchor in San Diego. Twelve-year-old cabin boy Shipwreck -- so named after he was rescued from the sea by the pirates -- is anxious to begin his long journey home to Boston. Instead, he finds himself swept up in a treacherous plot. It seems his adventure is only just beginning. . . .

On a coach bound for Cricklewood, the orphan boy Touch caught his first glimpse of the haunt named The Great Chaffalo. According to rumor, he was once a famous magician who could turn a pile of straw into a horse. Now, Touch needs the ghost''s help in order to escape his wicked great-uncle. So, with an armload of straw and a determined spirit, Touch makes his plea to The Great Chaffalo -- and, magically, a horse appears! But can magic save Touch when his great-uncle’s schemes grow even more villainous?

A one-man dog Part wolf and fiercely independent, Jim Ugly is a dog who answers to only one person. Unfortunately, that man -- Sam Bannock -- has disappeared. Rumor has it that Sam is dead, but to his son, Jake, something about that doesn''t sound quite right. So Jake and Jim Ugly embark on a wild journey into the frontier West, where they find themselves pursued by a pretty lady, a theater troupe, and one very ornery yellow-legged man. And they all want to know one thing: Where is Sam Bannock?

Enemies at first sight Orphaned Bo Gamage has nowhere to go. So he ends up in the old Queen of Sheba Hotel in a ghost town in the middle of the desert. It''s dry and bare and -- worst of all -- the only other kid there is his awful cousin Madeleine, who calls herself Mzzz Mad. Soon, they''re caught up in a battle for a missing map, the mystery of the tattooed head, and the search for the old Pegleg Smith gold mine. Then Bo and Mzzz Mad find themselves in deadly danger and handcuffed -- together!

The Gamages and the Martinkas have been feuding for generations. When Bo Gamage is orphaned, he finds himself in a nest of Martinkas out on the California desert. Peppered with witty dialogue that bites faster than a Mojave green rattlesnake, this humorous tale shows that even Gamages and Martinkas may be able to help each other chase after their dreams.

"It; s true, I did tell a lie once, " says McBroom. But it''s not about the cold snap that froze sunlight to the ground. Or even about the time the McBroom chickens ate lightning bugs and glowed so bright, they used them as lanterns. Whatever it is, it''s bound to be laugh-out-loud funny, as his name is Josh McBroom. Illustrations. Age 7-10.

A bratty prince and his whipping boy have many adventures when they inadvertently trade places after becoming involved with dangerous outlaws.

In the further adventures of Josh McBroom, the crops grow so fast, you''d better step out of the way when you plant corn, red barns turn blue in the cold, and words freeze still in mid-air. "As fresh as ever."--Booklist.

The man with the spats rolled up his sleeves and proceeded to pluck a polished red billiard ball out of thin air. Presto! It vanished. Abracadabra! It reappeared. It turned white. it blushed red again. VoiIá! Suddenly there were four billiard balls between this amazing man''s fingers. I was stunned. All of this was happening right under my nose. And there was more. He flipped the deck into falling waterfalls of cards, spun them into fans, and thrust a sword through a shower of cards to impale the seven of diamonds -- selected a moment before. I was dazzled. The moment he finished his act and ushered us gawkers back onto the sidewalk, I knew what I wanted to be. Someone else could be president of the United States. I wanted to be a magician.

The McBroom family is plagued by a mysterious ghost that visits their amazing one-acre farm after every prolonged freezing spell.

After leaving their rocky Connecticut farm to seek their fortunes in the West, Josh McBroom, his wife Melissa, and their eleven redheaded children stop in Iowa where they become the owners of a small but very unusual piece of property.

When Josh McBroom learns that the eighty acres of Iowa farmland he''s purchased are all stacked up on top of each other at the bottom of a muddy little pond, he thinks he''s been bamboozled. But McBroom knows he''s got the better of the bargain when the pond dries up to reveal an acre of soil so rich that seeds spring up into full-grown plants in no time and even nickels grow into quarters.

Skinny Chancy and his newly found friend, the great rascal, enjoy humorous escapades as they travel by their wits up and across the Midwest in search of Chancy''s family.

A madcap tale of fog and phantoms Opie and Aunt Etta think there''s something funny going on when Professor Pepper announces that he''s going to raise the ghost of a dead outlaw--live on stage. Can Opie cut through all t he fog to get to the bottom of the professor''s plans? See the Ghost of Crookneck John! That''s what Professor Pepper''s sign promises, and Opie can hardly wait to see such a sight. But the unseen specter escapes from his coffin during the show, and if that weren''t bad enough, the town bank is robbed too! Is Crookneck John a bandit from beyond the grave--or is more than the fog being pulled over the townsfolk''s'' eyes? A reissue of one of Sid Fleischman''s early novels.