What happens when Joey and his sister, Mary Alice -- two city slickers from Chicago -- make their annual summer visits to Grandma Dowdel's seemingly sleepy Illinois town? August 1929: They see their first corpse, and he isn't resting easy.August 1930: The Cowgill boys terrorize the town, and Grandma fights back. August 1931: Joey and Mary Alice help Grandma trespass, poach, catch the sheriff in his underwear, and feed the hungry -- all in one day. And there's more, as Joey and Mary Alice make seven summer trips to Grandma's -- each one funnier than the year before -- in self-contained chapters that readers can enjoy as short stories or take together for a rollicking good novel. In the tradition of American humorists from Mark Twain to Flannery O'Connor, popular author Richard Peck has created a memorable world filled with characters who, like Grandma herself, are larger than life and twice as entertaining.

Richard Peck is one of the most celebrated children's book writers in the country He is the author of more than thirty novels, including A Long Way from Chicago, A Year Down Yonder, Secrets at Sea and The Mouse with the Question Mark Tale. He has won the Newbery Medal, the Edgar Award, the Margaret A. Edwards Award, a National Humanities Medal, and twice been a National Book Award finalist, among many other honors. He lives in New York City.