Sandy Beach and the Mysterious Book

Sandy Beach is a nearly normal eighth grader who lives in a modest house with her family in the modern-day, fictional beach town of Rosa Beach, California, over an hour north of San Francisco.

Sandy’s distinguishing attribute, which she discovered a year previously during a conversation with her older sister, is her ability to “hear” the truth any time that someone is directly lying to her. This skill, combined with her on-going desire to know the whole truth, leads her into dangerous and suspenseful situations as the result of her amateur (and often accidental) sleuthing.

In this first book of the Sandy Beach series, attempting to understand two strangers’ deception about a mysterious book leads the 13-year-old Sandy headlong into the doghouse (literally) and other dangerous situations related to an international dog smuggling ring invading Rosa Beach.

The young teenager is joined in this adventure—resulting from her quest for the whole truth behind the “mysterious book”—by her best friend, Forrest, her next-door neighbor who helps her out of harm’s way on more than one occasion, and her boy-crazy older sister, Myrtle.

The story revolves around two men in a white van who, believing that Sandy knows more than she does about their illegal activities, pursue and finally abduct her from in front of the library.

Throughout the story, Sandy finds strength and direction in surmising what she thinks Simone LeClerc, international spy and fictional character in the adventure stories Sandy loves to read, would do or has done in a similar dangerous situation.

With Forrest's help, Sandy finally manages to unravel the mystery of the book and save all the pedigree pooches in town from potential dognapping before it is too late, proving that the truth can prevail even if it has to be uncovered by a middle school-aged girl with a little help from her friends.