New York City in 1922 saw showpeople like Fanny Brice and Harry Houdini rubbing shoulders with confidence men and bootleggers like Arnold Rothstein, the gambler reputed to have fixed the 1919 World Series. Henrietta Fine, a precocious sixteen-year-old apprentice locksmith, weaves in and out of this world, living by her wits and the double-cross. Her safe cracking skills make her useful to both Houdini and to the wily Rothstein, who provides cover for her after the police implicate her in a diamond heist. Her picaresque adventures take her from the woods of New Jersey, whose secret Indian...

This book, aims to help young readers to build their vocabularies and to help them to remember definitions by using mnemonic aids. Using 26 vocabulary words from aggrandizement to zany, it uses stories containing puns that help the young readers to retain the meanings of sometimes complex words.

This book helps young readers to improve their vocabulary by providing definitions for 26 more difficult words from 'abasement' to 'zealot'. Using amusing stories containing puns that provide mnemonic devices for remembering the definitions, the young readers can improve their word power while enjoying their reading.

When the classical scholar Phineas Ort, Bogus U.'s first choice for president, disappears, the search committee decides to recruit a hit man to keep the fractious faculty in line. Phineas has been abducted by the Robaccia gang, who aim to install their own candidate in the president's office to cash in on Bogus U.'s well-known corruption. Christy Mahon, a former member of the Robaccia gang, now on the lam for having crossed its boss, Brooklyn Benny, has landed a job at Bogus U. as a janitor. Listening through a heating vent, he overhears the search committee's deliberations and decides to...