The Mystery of the Suspicious Spices

by Harper Paris, Marcos Calo (Illustrator)

Overview

Ethan and Ella discover some suspicious spices in a market in Mumbai, India, in the sixth book of Greetings from Somewhere, an exciting series about mystery, travel, and adventure.

Ethan and Ella venture into the bustling markets of Mumbai, India, where there are tons of beautiful sights and smells—from silky fabrics to bread being baked to jars of spices. When one of the spice sellers starts getting complaints about his saffron, he is beside himself. His spices have always been known to be the purest in the market. Ethan and Ella are on the case—and they soon discover that someone has been meddling with the spices!

With easy-to-read language and illustrations on almost every page, the Greetings from Somewhere chapter books are perfect for beginning readers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781481414678
Publisher:	Little Simon
Publication date:	12/09/2014
Series:	Greetings from Somewhere , #6
Pages:	128
Sales rank:	358,101
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 7.20(h) x 0.50(d)
Lexile:	530L (what's this?)
Age Range:	5 - 9 Years

About the Author

Harper Paris loves to travel. Her favorite cities in the world are Paris (like her name!) and New York City. She has collected many souvenirs on her travels, including a good-luck coin from Japan and a reindeer-horn pendant from Sweden. She also loves mysteries. When she was a kid, she read Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books after bedtime with a flashlight. She now lives with her family (including two cats and a bunny, who are not good travelers) in Ithaca, New York.

Marcos Calo has worked as a professional artist for more than fourteen years. He has worked in different fields including illustration, animation, and comic books. He lives with his wife and daughter in A Coruña, a small Spanish town by the seaside.

Read an Excerpt

Mystery of the Suspicious Spices
“This is the coolest castle I’ve ever seen!” Ethan Briar exclaimed.

“It’s not a castle. It’s a palace,” his twin sister, Ella, corrected him. “It says so right here in Dad’s guidebook. ‘Taj Mahal’ means ‘crown of palaces.’ ”

Ethan shrugged. “Castle, palace, whatever. It’s still awesome!”

“An emperor named Shah Jahan built it in memory of his wife back in the sixteen hundreds,” their dad, Andy, explained.



“It has become one of the most popular tourist attractions in the world,” their mom, Josephine, added. “Millions of people visit it every year.”

“Wow!” Ella stared in awe at the white marble building. It was really beautiful—and really big, too!

The Taj Mahal was the latest stop on the Briar family’s trip across India. So far, they’d visited a tea plantation, a desert, and a snow-capped mountain. They had ridden on a small, old-fashioned train called a “toy train” that chugged up steep hills. They’d seen lots of temples, including one shaped like a giant stone frog. Tomorrow morning, they were flying to the city of Mumbai, which was on the Arabian Sea.



Mrs. Briar was a travel writer for their hometown newspaper, the Brookeston Times. Her job was to write articles about interesting places all over the world. The Briars had already been to Venice, Italy; Paris, France; and Beijing, China. Their last adventure before India was a safari in Africa! While Mrs. Briar worked, Mr. Briar homeschooled Ethan and Ella in their second-grade lessons.



Mr. Briar pointed his camera at the twins. “Let me get a photo of you kids standing on the steps. Wait. Why can’t I see anything?”

“You forgot to take off the lens cap, Dad,” Ethan told him.

Mr. Briar laughed. “Oh, right! Okay, here we go. Smile!” Click!

Just then, Mrs. Briar’s cell phone rang. She answered it. “Hello? Yes, this is Jo Briar.”

She spoke to the person on the other end for a few moments. When she hung up, she said, “That was Mr. Deepak Singh. He’s an old friend of Grandpa Harry, and he lives in Mumbai. He invited us to dinner tomorrow night.”