Not Your Usual Day at the Beach: Roxie and the Hooligans at Buzzard's Roost by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

Since Roxie's daring adventure foiled the bank robbers with the help of her town's notorious Hooligans, Roxie has hoped for a truce with that scruffy, ragtag gang of misfits.

But Roxie underestimates the Hooligans. Even when her Uncle Dangerfoot takes her and her bespectacled friend Norman along to his beach house, hoping to work on his hush-hush invention with his friend Lord Thistlebottom far from prying eyes and the press, they find a way to stowaway.

It was almost five hours later, and evening when they reached a large old house that sat back a bit from the ocean. Roxie and Norman were very stiff.

Uncle Dangerfoot reached for the latch on the trailer and opened the door. "What in thunder...?" he bellowed.

Roxie stared as Helvetia Hagus, Simon Surly, Freddy Filch, and Smoky Jo came tumbling out.

It seems as if Roxie cannot escape the Hooligans. Uncle Dangerfoot inexplicably accepts their story that their parents will not come to fetch them, and although the housekeeper and cook, Mrs. Tumbledry, is kindly, the other tenant, the Widow Bittersweet, veiled and gowned in heavy brown mourning garb, is scary weird. Rosie and Norman resolve to make the best of the uninvited guests, and Uncle Dangerfoot and Lord Thistlebottom seem totally absorbed in their secret invention... until the larcenous Helvetia, always on the lookout for a source of lucre, manages to swipe it.

The kids discover that the covert contraption is a rocket-powered jet pack, and Helvetia seizes the opportunity to try it out. Apparently the device is not quite ready for prime time, but Helvetia survives soaring above the beach, followed by a dive into the sand. The cat is out of the bag, and Uncle Dangerfoot is forced to explain the real purpose of his hideaway. He and Thistlebottom conceal their device in the Widow's baby's crib, where the petite Smoky Joe has elected to sleep, and, swathed in a baby blanket, she winds up being mistaken for the jet pack and kidnapped by the nefarious villain, Alfred Applejack.

Can Rosie and the remaining Hooligans combine forces to save Smokie Jo, or will she have to rescue them, in Phyllis Reynolds Naylor's second rip-roaring, harem scarem comic adventure, Roxie and the Hooligans at Buzzard's Roost (Atheneum Books, 2018).  In this series, Naylor's delightful ability to combine colorful and perilous adventures with picaresque humor is reminiscent of John Bellairs in his quaint and comic Gothic series which include The House with a Clock in Its Walls (Lewis Barnavelt) and his The Mummy, the Will, and the Crypt (Johnny Dixon). Naylor, Newbery Award winner for Shiloh (The Shiloh Quartet), never fails to delight and enthrall readers, and this easy reading adventure novel is just right for summer nights.