The Black Tower [Paperback]

At the eerie Hunt mansion, Herculeah Jones has been reading aloud to Lionus Hunt, an elderly stroke victim who can only communicate by blinking his eyes (once for yes, twice for no). Mr. Hunt seems to be trying to tell Herculeah something, but his gruff nurse won?t allow her to ask any questions. What is Mr. Hunt trying to say? Is it related to a murder that took place in the mansion?s black tower years ago? And who is the creepy old lady who lives in the mansion? Herculeah?s friend Meat thinks she may be asking for trouble, but Herculeah Jones won?t quit until she gets to the bottom of this mystery.Move over, Nancy Drew, Herculeah Jones has arrived! (School Library Journal)Betsy Byars began her writing career rather late in life. In all of my school years, . . . not one single teacher ever said to me, 'Perhaps you should consider becoming a writer,' Byars recalls. Anyway, I didn't want to be a writer. Writing seemed boring. You sat in a room all day by yourself and typed. If I was going to be a writer at all, I was going to be a foreign correspondent like Claudette Colbert inArise My Love. I would wear smashing hats, wisecrack with the guys, and have a byline known round the world. My father wanted me to be a mathematician. So Byars set out to become mathematician, but when she couldn't grasp calculus in college, she turned to English. Even then, writing was not on her immediate horizon.

First, she married and started a family. The writing career didn't emerge until she was 28, a mother of two children, and living in a small place she called the barracks apartment, in Urbana, Illinois. She and her husband, Ed, had moved there in 1956 so he could attend graduate school at the University of Illinois. She was bored, had no friends, and so turned to writing to fill her time. Byars started writing articles forThe Saturday Evening Post,Look,and other magazines. As her family grew and her children started to read, she began to write books for yl“+