When city girl meets country girl, on a lake shore in the Ozarks, the bond is instantaneous, a catalyst for a summer of non-stop, action-packed adventure. Add brothers and sisters into the mix and soon they are also entangled in crazy, mixed up family dynamics. And no summer on the Ozarks would be complete without a hidden cave, a modern-day James gang, and a ghostly visitor from the past.

Something is amiss in the village of Beecher. The old Hoffman house is being visited by a spiteful ghost, bizarre acts of vandalism wreak havoc at an old railroad station, and big-city thugs are running amok. It's certainly not what Simon expects when he is suddenly dropped into his grandparents' home-in the middle of the biggest, flattest cornfield in the world-for the entire summer. Within days of arriving, he begins receiving email messages in archaic English giving obscure clues to some long ago crime. A spy drops into his computer in the still of the night and take a leisurely snoop...