Tracy Gardner Knihy

"Perfect for fans of Jane K. Cleland and Ellery Adams, the second volume in Tracy Gardner's antiques-themed mystery series finds appraiser Avery Ayers sleuthing a murder in a castle."-- Provided by publisher

Savanna Shepherd, a former art authenticator turned grade school art teacher, is delighted when her Uncle Max and Uncle Freddie move to Carson. Uncle Max takes a job at Libby's Blooms, where Savanna teaches a still life painting class for adults. But one morning, Uncle Max finds a dead body in the rooftop greenhouse ... and even worse, it looks like an inside job. Savanna and her sisters (Skylar, a lawyer, and Sydney, the owner of a pet shop and grooming salon) dig in to find the real murderer. With their connections to the community and Savanna's keen eye for details, they uncover longstanding resentments and horticultural clues. Meanwhile, Savanna's dating local doctor Aidan Gallager, but she worries it'll cause a scandal, since his daughter is in her class. As Savanna's investigation leads her into thorny situations, the killer may be arranging another murder: her own

After her parents' deaths, Avery Ayers takes over the family business, Antiquities & Artifacts Appraised, from their home in Lilac Grove and a Manhattan branch. Living with her younger sister Tilly and their eccentric Aunt Midge, along with her Afghan hound, Avery's life revolves around jewels, tapestries, and rare finds. Everything changes when she discovers a connection between the theft of a priceless ruby and her parents' demise. Hired by the Museum of Antiquities to appraise a stunning ruby, Avery realizes it resembles a missing stone from the museum's Xiang Dynasty dragon medallion exhibit. As she and her colleagues—Sir Robert Lane and Micah Abbott—investigate, they suspect they may have found the missing gem. However, complications arise: security guard Art Smith is suspicious, another body is discovered, and Avery receives ominous notes threatening her life. She seeks Art's help to narrow down the list of suspects, including art collector Oliver Renell, curator Nate Brennan, acquisitions liaison Francesca Giolitti, and actor Tyler Chadwick. As the investigation unfolds, Avery must uncover the truth before Lilac Grove becomes the backdrop for her own demise.

ScratchJr is a free app that allows young people to start learning the basics of coding. In this guide, readers have fun while learning how to record speech and sounds and then use them to create projects in ScratchJr. The step-by-step activities presented in this book were designed to grab the interest of young readers while preparing them for more complex programming languages and coding projects.

Coding comes to life in this colorful guide to making animated stories with the free ScratchJr app (available for most tablets). The easy-to-follow visual projects help young learners come to grips with coding basics and prepare them for more complex coding languages. The simple projects help children create walking, talking animations and interactive stories using multiple pages. With colorful illustrations and ScratchJr images throughout, children can see how their projects could look, while the extra activities on each page check the depth of their understanding.