Sammy Keyes and the Hotel Thief

Wendelin Van Draanen

Jan 2001 · Live Oak Media · Narrated by Tara Sands

About this audiobook

The debut mystery that kicked off the popular series about a live-wire girl detective, this Edgar Allan Poe Award-winning story takes place in Sammy’s neighborhood. Right across the street from her grandmother’s apartment, in fact. While looking out the window with her grandma’s binoculars, Sammy witnesses a crime across the street at the Heavenly Hotel. What’s worse, the thief saw her spying! As Sammy attempts to find the burglar who has made several other hits in the neighborhood, she finds herself trying to keep him from uncovering her – or worse, the police discovering that she’s living illegally with her grandmother in the seniors-only housing! A modern-day Nancy Drew, the saucy, smart Sammy Keyes is a sleuth whose escapades entertain and inspire teens.

About the author

Wendelin Van Draanen was born on January 6, 1965 in Chicago, Illinois. She is the daughter of chemists who emigrated from Holland. She worked as a math teacher and then as a computer science teacher before becoming an author. Wendelin Van Draanen began her writing career with a screenplay and soon switched to adult novels and then children's books. She is best known for her Sammy Keyes series of novels, which she started writing in 1997, featuring a teenage detective named Samantha Keyes. Her popular Sammy Keyes series had been nominated four times for the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Children's Mystery and won with "Sammy Keyes and the Hotel Thief". Her Shredderman series also yielded a Christopher Medal for Secret Identity. She has also written several novels such as: How I Survived Being a Girl and Flipped.