Kitty Hawk and the Curse of the Yukon Gold
by Iain Reading
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Kitty Hawk and the Curse of the Yukon Gold is the thrilling first installment in a new young adult series of adventure mystery stories by Iain Reading. This first book of the Kitty Hawk Flying Detective Agency Series introduces Kitty Hawk, an intrepid teenage pilot with her own De Havilland Beaver seaplane and a nose for mystery and intrigue. A cross between Amelia Earhart, Nancy Drew and Pippi Longstocking, Kitty is a quirky young heroine with boundless curiosity and a knack for getting herself into all kinds of precarious situations.
After leaving her home in the western Canadian
fishing village of Tofino to spend the summer in Alaska studying humpback
whales, Kitty finds herself caught up in an unforgettable adventure involving
stolen gold, devious criminals, ghostly shipwrecks, and bone-chilling curses.
Kitty's adventure begins with the lingering mystery of a sunken ship called the
Clara Nevada. As the plot continues to unfold, this spirited story will have
readers anxiously following every twist and turn as they are swept along
through the history of the Klondike Gold Rush to a suspenseful final climatic
chase across the rugged terrain of Canada's Yukon.
Kitty Hawk and the Curse of the Yukon Gold is
a perfect book to fire the imagination of readers of all ages. Filled with
fascinating and highly Google-able locations and history this book will inspire
anyone to learn and experience more for themselves.
Prologue
Back Where The Entire
Adventure Began
~Excerpt~
Prologue
Back Where The Entire
Adventure Began
As soon as the engine began
to sputter, I knew that I was in real trouble. Up until then, I had somehow
managed to convince myself that there was just something wrong with the fuel
gauges. After all, how could I possibly have burnt through my remaining fuel as
quickly as the gauges seemed to indicate? It simply wasn't possible. But with
the engine choking and gasping, clinging to life on the last fumes of aviation
fuel, it was clear that when the fuel gauges read, "Empty," they
weren't kidding around.
The lightning strike that
took out my radio and direction-finding gear hadn't worried me all that
much. (Okay, I admit it worried me a little bit.) It wasn't the first time that
this had happened to me, and besides, I still had my compasses to direct me to
where I was going. But I did get a little bit concerned when I found nothing
but open ocean as far my eyes could see at precisely the location where I fully
expected to find tiny Howland Island—and its supply of fuel for the next leg of
my journey—waiting for me. The rapidly descending needles on my fuel gauges
made me even more nervous as I continued to scout for the island, but only when
the engine began to die did I realize that I really had a serious problem on my
hands.
The mystery of the
disappearing fuel.
The enigma of the missing
island.
The conundrum of what do I do
now?
"Exactly," the
little voice inside my head said to me in one of those annoying 'I-told-you-so'
kind of voices. "What do you do now?"
"First, I am going to
stay calm," I replied. "And think this through."
"You'd better think
fast," the little voice said, and I could almost hear it tapping on the
face of a tiny wristwatch somewhere up there in my psyche. "If you want to
make it to your twentieth birthday, that is.
Don't forget that you're almost out of fuel."
"Thanks a lot," I
replied. "You're a big help."
Easing forward with the
control wheel I pushed my trusty De Havilland Beaver into a nosedive. Residual
fuel from the custom-made fuel tanks at the back of the passenger cabin
dutifully followed the laws of gravity and spilled forward, accumulating at the
front and allowing the fuel pumps to transfer the last remaining drops of fuel
into the main forward belly tank. This maneuver breathed life back into the
engine and bought me a few more precious minutes to ponder my situation.
"Mayday, mayday,
mayday," I said, keying my radio transmitter as I leveled my flight path
out again. "This is aircraft Charlie Foxtrot Kilo Tango Yankee, calling
any ground station or vessel hearing this message, over."
I keyed the mic off and
listened intently for a reply. Any reply. Please? But there was nothing. There
was barely even static. My radio was definitely fried.
It was hard to believe that
it would all come down to this. After the months of preparation and training.
After all the adventures that I'd had, the friends I'd made, the beauty I'd
experienced, the differences and similarities I'd discovered from one culture
to the next and from one human being to the next. All of this in the course of
my epic flight around the entire world.
Or I should say, "my
epic flight almost around the entire world," in light of my current
situation.
And the irony of it was
absolutely incredible. Three-quarters of a century earlier the most famous
female pilot of them all had disappeared over this exact same endless patch of
Pacific Ocean on her own quest to circle the globe. And she had disappeared
while searching for precisely the same island that was also eluding me as I scanned
the horizon with increasing desperation.
"Okay," I thought
to myself. "Just be cool and take this one step at a time to think the
situation through." I closed my eyes and focused on my breathing, slowing
it down and reining in the impulse to panic. Inside my head, I quickly and
methodically replayed every flight that I'd ever flown. Every emergency I'd
ever faced. Every grain of experience that I had accumulated along the long
road that had led me to this very moment. Somewhere in there was a detail that
was the solution to my current predicament. I was sure of it. And all I had to
do was find it.
Maybe the answer to my
current situation lay somewhere among the ancient temples of Angkor in
Cambodia? Or in the steamy jungles of east Africa? Or inside the towering
pyramids of Giza? Or among the soaring minarets of Sarajevo? Or on the emerald
rolling hills and cliffs of western Ireland? Or on the harsh and rocky lava
fields of Iceland?
Wherever the answer was, it
was going to have to materialize quickly, or another female pilot (me) would
run the risk of being as well-known throughout the world as Amelia Earhart. And
for exactly the same reason.
"It's been a good run at
least," the little voice inside my head observed, turning oddly
philosophical as the fuel supplies ran critically low. "You've had more
experiences on this journey around the world than some people do in their
entire lifetime."
"That's it!" I
thought.
Maybe the answer to all this
lies even further back in time? All the way back to the summer that had
inspired me to undertake this epic journey in the first place. All the way back
to where North America meets the Pacific Ocean—the islands and glaciers and
whales of Alaska.
All the way back to where
this entire adventure began.
There are currently four books in the Kitty
Hawk Flying Detective Agency Series available for sale on Amazon
(Clicking on the title or picture will take you to Amazon)
(Clicking on the title or picture will take you to Amazon)
About
Iain Reading
Iain
Reading is passionate about Root Beer, music, and writing. He is Canadian, but
currently resides in the Netherlands working for the United Nations. He has
published 4 books in the Kitty Hawk Flying Detective Agency Series.
For more information, go to http://www.kittyhawkworld.com/
For more information, go to http://www.kittyhawkworld.com/
Thank you so much for having my book as your Sunday Spotlight! I hope that people will enjoy these adventures of Kitty Hawk.
ReplyDeleteYou are very welcome! It was my pleasure:)
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