Island of the Unknowns

This gripping mystery, spiked with math clues, follows quirky outcasts Lady Di and Tom Jones as they try to save their woebegone island community. In their trailer park next to the Folsom Energy Plant, people have started to vanish, and no one seems to care. At first the kids barely notice the disappearances themselves—until their beloved math tutor, Mrs. Clarke, is abducted too. Mrs. Clarke has left them clues to her whereabouts in the form of equations that lead them all over the trailer park, through hidden tunnels under nearby “Mount Trashmore,” and into the Folsom Energy Plant itself, where Lady Di and Tom Jones and a gang of other misfits uncover the sordid truth about what’s really happening on their island.

Readers “will be swept up in the fast talk and exciting action” (Booklist) of this “inheritor of The Westing Game” (Kirkus) that is sure to make math lovers of even the most determined number-phobes.

Benedict Carey, a New York Times science section writer, was a math and physics major in college. Hoping to ignite a passion for math in his own kids, he has crafted a smart and action-packed story for middle-grade readers that uses math lessons to solve the mystery. He and his wife and their children live in New York City.