Showing results by author "Victor Appleton" in All Categories

It's another day at the Swift Academy when Tom starts finding little troll-like figures around campus. And he's not the only one. Much to the amusement and curiosity of students, these dolls are appearing all over the school. But even after they're collected by faculty, a second wave mysteriously appears - except these replacements record audio and play it back for surrounding listeners. Before everyone knows it, secrets and gossip are revealed across campus, and suddenly the figures aren't nearly as fun as they used to be.

Every year, Swift Academy students go to a nearby summer camp to field-test their inventions. Tom and his friends have been working hard on all their projects, but they’re most thrilled about Noah’s new virtual reality simulation. They can’t wait for it to go live, and everyone is looking forward to running tests at the camp. Nothing dulls their excitement, not even when a mysterious prankster starts messing with people’s inventions.

With his new shadow in tow, Tom expects the night to be uneventful. But when the facility suddenly goes into quarantine mode, the overnight lock-in turns into a building-wide lockdown. Tom and his friends are left trapped in their respective rooms, with no way to communicate the outside world. As they make their way through the facility using methods that are a little more...creative...than normal, Tom and his friends start realizing that there is more to this quarantine than meets the eye. It’s up to them to not only escape, but also find out what - or who - is behind the lockdown.

Tom gets to take all sorts of cool classes at the Swift Academy of Science and Technology, but robotics may be the one he is most excited for. Their teacher is holding a battling robot tournament, and Tom has to build a machine that will come out on top. With the final battle coming up, Tom and his friends need as much time as possible to refine their masterpiece. But the rest of their teachers have been giving so many pop quizzes that they can barely focus in class, never mind concentrate on the tournament.

Tanks are a new wartime technology, and as the US enters WWI, Tom uses his skills and his family's factory to secretly design and build a bigger, better tank, able to travel at twice the speed of British models, with heavier armor plating, ability to roll over wider trenches, and other innovative improvements. As war fever sets in, many young men are enlisting, except for Tom Swift, which raises many concerns that he is a slacker. Even his girlfriend begins to doubt him, but he has to be secretive even from her, as the Germans do their best to steal his secrets. ( Michele Fry)

Tom Swift & friends journey to the Arctic in his custom airship to seek for the legendary Valley of Gold. When his map is stolen by his longtime nemesis, Andy Foger, who has himself built a competing airship, the race is on across frigid Alaska to see who will be the first to find the limitless fortune. (Summary from Wikipedia) This is book eight in the original Tom Swift series.

Tom Swift flies his airship to the mountain tops of Colorado to seek for the secret of the Diamond Makers: criminal scientists who have figured out the formula of manufacturing a limitless fortune in diamonds. But these rogues will stop at nothing to keep their secret. Tom & friends are soon captured and left to die in a collapsing mountain. (Summary by Wikipedia)

When a top-secret space probe is mysteriously shot down over the ocean, Tom Swift Jr. jumps into action with his latest invention—the Electronic Hydrolung! In Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung, the young genius must race against a shadowy enemy to recover the probe from the ocean floor before it falls into the wrong hands. With danger lurking beneath the waves and sabotage at every turn, Tom’s ingenuity is pushed to the limit in this thrilling sci-fi adventure.

In Tom Swift and His Motor Boat, Tom's father - Barton Swift - a world-famous scientist, has been robbed of one of his greatest inventions. It's up to Tom to bring the criminals to justice, but he becomes a target of the rogues' anger when he unknowingly buys a boat in which the criminals have an interest in. This full cast production is an exciting adventure for the whole family.

The first in a series of 28 Tom Swift books by Victor Appleton, this book introduces us to our hero Tom Swift son of noted inventor, Barton Swift. Tom's father's invention for new and improved turbine motor is stolen by the Happy Harry Gang, who we will meet in future episodes since they manage to escape this time. Each chapter is a cliffhanger filled with intrigue, espionage and excitement!

Three very successful series of stories aimed at children and teens were created by a man who had a book-packaging house and didn’t want to cause confusion. So none of the stories ever had his name on them. Instead, Edward Stratemeyer hired several writers and provided them with story ideas that were then published under the pseudonym Victor Appleton.

Young Tom Swift purchases a motorcycle and, being the inventor that he is, modifies it to his specifications in time to transport his father's new invention (a revolutionary turbine motor design) to Albany. However, a group of investors plan to steal the design for themselves, and send a gang of thieves after Tom as he travels the backroads to Albany.

This time Tom Swift is off to Alaska to hunt for the valley of gold. His friend Abe Abercrombie, an old miner, claims to know approximately where it lies: "up where the icebergs and caves of ice are." But he needs Tom and his airplane to help him locate the exact spot. Unknown to Tom, his chief rival, Andy Foger, gets wind of the project and vows to beat Tom to the prize. Unknown to both are the Alaskan natives who will kill to protect their gold...

Here's another light-hearted adventure in this popular series of entertaining stories about Tom Swift and his latest inventions. This time it's an electric car. Tom is intent on building an electric car capable of beating all other electrics currently in production. But primarily, he has a personal goal and challenge. He wants to race his chief rival, Andy Foger, and beat him badly. Herein lies an exciting account of how automobile races were conducted in the early 1900s....

Tom Swift is hired by a film company to invent a new kind of moving picture camera: "small and light with electric power, a regular wizard camera." Follow Tom as he takes it to Africa and India to film action pictures of wild animals, herds of elephants, scenes of native wars, earthquakes, and eruptions of volcanoes. The excitement begins on the sea voyage and continues on to Africa where Tom does his filming from a balloon...

Volume 16 of the Tom Swift series, finds our hero inventing the world's largest, and of course best, cannon for Uncle Sam, able to destroy a target at a distance of over 30 miles. Not only does Tom Swift engineer this large cannon, but he also invents the propellant. Take-charge type of guy that he is, generals and villains are no match for him, not to mention his faithful giant Koku who nearly single-handedly ties down the 30-ton loose cannon on the deck of a pitching warship.

Book 4 of the Tom Swift series opens with our hero's father completing an amazing submarine loaded with high-tech gadgetry in his backyard and ready to enter it into a government competition. Tom, however, discovers through the newspaper that a vessel has sunk containing $300,000 in gold (which was a lot of money back in 1910 when this book was published). Tom and his friends decide to forgo the government prize of $50,000 to pursue the bigger one - encountering some new villains and despicable characters along the way.

Tom Swift and his Electric Runabout takes us back to gentler times when the bad guys weren't really that bad, didn't carry Uzis, and being an inventor like Thomas Edison was the dream of many young boys. In this book our hero creates an electric automobile with a top speed of over 100 mi./h, saves the bank, gives the bully two black eyes, wins the prize for the fastest automobile in a 500 mile race, only stopping once to recharge his batteries. Without a NASCAR pit crew, it only took Tom 25 min.

This is volume 6 of the Tom Swift series, Tom Swift and his Wireless Message where our hero, the young inventor, Tom Swift helps a fellow inventor get his airship the Whizzer off the ground. So far off the ground in fact that he and his fellow travelers are caught in a storm stranding them on an uninhabited tropical island fraught with earthquakes.

Tom Swift and His Motorcycle is Volume 2 of the original Tom Swift series. In this book, first published in 1910, our hero, the young inventor Tom Swift, buys a motorboat at auction that he "soups up", making it one of the fastest boats on Lake Charlupa. Meanwhile, the Happy Harry Gang has some sort of interest in the motorboat, with shady characters lurking about the Swift laboratories and the boat.