The Adventures of Margo: Girl Detective
Children’s Mystery/Detective/Spy
9 – 11 Years
1st in Series
Setting – Ohio
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Austin Macauley
Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 21, 2025
Hardcover Print length ‏ : ‎ 182 pages

Synopsis

Margo is not your average ten-year-old. She’s a junior detective with a knack for solving mysteries that leave even the adults stumped!

Join Margo as she jumps into thrilling adventures – from tracking down a runaway to tailing a mysterious spy. With her quick thinking, fearless determination, and a little help from her two best friends, Margo navigates a world filled with quirky characters, puzzling clues, and even a ghostly encounter.

But can Margo keep her cool, and will she crack the case before it’s too late?

Perfect for young readers who love mystery, adventure, and a dash of the unexpected!

Amazon * B&N * Bookshop * Kobo

Guest Post

Travel Inspires Mysteries

It’s fun reading mysteries set in exotic locales. Travel inspires my mystery writing. Plots and situations seem to write themselves when I’m standing in a Cambodian jungle or roaming a haunted castle in Scotland. Mysteries are fun and thought provoking wherever the location. The Adventures of Margo, Girl Detective takes place in Ohio. She learns about other cultures from the variety of characters in her town. When I saw where Indian Jones was filmed in one jungle location that got put into Jack Jack The Jungle Cat.

Go to travel talks if you’re thinking of a setting for your latest mystery. I ask the speaker questions to get more information on a location issue. People have had different adventures. One friend took a camel ride in Morrocco through the desert and overnighted in a tent. That experience will be in a later book. A

Ask the experts about solving a plot issue in an unfamiliar location. Then you know if something will work or needs to be tweaked in your mystery. When writing Jack Jack The Cat and the Yellowstone Adventure, I had a snag. A director of the park wanted Jack Jack the Cat to have a wolf encounter and not get eaten. My local Fish and Game Department person said the cat would have to jump onto a log in a fast-moving stream. If the alpha wolf didn’t go after him, then none of the other wolves would either. A few months later I went to Yellowstone and the guide showed me where that could happen,

How do you get to these places for writing your great mysteries without breaking the bank? One method for getting airline tickets is a credit card through an airline. I go to London on business and to see friends free except for the sales tax. I am a speaker internationally and this makes it doable. I put everything, and I mean everything on that card. I pay utilities, grocery, gas, and school fees with my Visa. I only charge what I can pay off in entirety each month, so do not accrue any interest charges.

The big way to have money to travel is to live simply. Scrutinize your expenditures to see what can go. Pare down your gift list and inform these recipients (who probably have been wanting to do this too). Some friends asked me to just take them out for a latte instead of exchanging presents.

See if your professional organization has trips or conferences in far flung places. There used to be a travel agency that had trips with daily meetings for four types of professionals and nursing was one of them. I went to Kenya, Poland, Prague, China and so many other places for a much lower price. The IRS allows one international trip a year for business. Take advantage of this and find a conference in your field in a desired location.

See how you can cut lodging costs when traveling. My mother took me on a trip to Washington D.C and we stayed in a dorm room and ate some meals there in Georgetown University’s cafeteria. The American travel guru Rick Steves, recommends taking a packaged tour, and opting out on some of the excursions and explore on your own. The price and convenience make it worthwhile to forgo a few paid local tours and balance the trip with some alone time away from the group. A few people have been pleased with doing house swaps with strangers for a few weeks. Make sure to do this through a reputable company.

I went to several travel talks where people recommended doing volunteer work through organizations, such as EarthWatch. These organizations do the arrangements, taking pressure off you. A couple who enjoys scuba diving did so through volunteering. They were off the coast of Australia helping with an environmental study on coral. The price was great for accommodations and food.

Travel companies and cruise lines that I use, send me e-mails with their special promotions and savings. My former travel agents alerted me when there were specials. I decide to act upon one of these promotions, such as our Viking River cruise to Christmas markets. Be creative in slashing costs and discovering fabulous travel deals. A friend recommended another travel agency with incredibly low fares and my sons and I went to India with them. Ask around or do an online search for travel agencies with consistently great prices.

Let your imagination go wild and come up with outside the box ideas. Mystery books are wonderful reading whether in set in your locale or across the world.

About the Author

Wendi Schuller loves mysteries and devoured Agatha Christie ones at an early age. She enjoys going to where they took place or were written, such as Egypt or the Seven Dials in London. Her new series, The Adventures of Margo, Girl Detective, have many cases to solve with the help of two friends.

Wendi Schuller is a globe-trotter by nature, having travelled to over sixty countries and jungles on three continents. She got the idea for her children’s book Jack Jack The Jungle Cat in Cambodia on one of those trips with her children. Combine her love for jungle habitat and animals with a career that expanded on her innate compassion for family, children and all living things – and you have a recipe for Jack Jack The Jungle Cat. Her first published book – The Global Guide to Divorce – was written in response to the need of many families to negotiate divorce with the least amount of trauma as possible. Wendi is a nurse, a Neuro-Linguistic Programmer, and a hypnotherapist.

Website * Website * Blue Sky * LinkedIn

Giveaway

a Rafflecopter giveaway