A sad boy. Without a single friend. His future bleak. Joey’s world has shattered. Ben, his only friend, has moved away with his family. Sad and depressed, Joey’s startled by the sudden appearance of an odd man who challenges him to look at the world differently and see hidden wonders right in front of him. He follows the man through a portal to a parallel world and is elated to find his friend Ben there but stunned to discover that they’re at the source of all ideas. To spend time together, they must join an expedition with two feisty dwarfs led by a mysterious girl seer in search of a monumental idea, but Joey fears for their lives since this world contains bloodthirsty trolls and crazed giants. Will Joey and his friend join the expedition and survive? If the expedition fails, Joey’s world will face an uncertain future. The Lost Lake Dig is the groundbreaking first book in The Idea Miners youth-based fantasy trilogy. While the story is full of excitement and danger, it’s also a message of hope and encouragement for the future. On the surface it’s a fantasy adventure, but underneath flows a stream of world-altering ideas, highlighting the gift of the human intellect. If you like hidden worlds with bizarre creatures, bonds of friendship, and danger, then you’ll love P.W. Cross’s fantasy adventure. Read The Idea Miners—The Lost Lake Dig today, to mine for new ideas, excitement, and inspiration! *** About the Series *** The Idea Miners trilogy is written for middle-grade readers. It’s a fantasy action tale packed with excitement and mystery that young readers love. Woven throughout the books are historical facts meant to spark an interest and appreciation in the reader for the great gifts of ideas to the world. Overview Each book is structured as a mysterious adventure with a revealing epilogue. The adventures involve youth from our world traveling with seers, dwarfs, and elves into a dangerous world populated with bloodthirsty trolls and fierce giants to retrieve yet-to-be discovered ideas. The epilogues summarize the discovered ideas that are obliquely hinted at in the adventures. The premise is that all ideas originate in a parallel world called the Land of Lights (LoL). The ideas are contained in buried, glowing spheres called logos. The logos must be mined and transported to our world, which is called the Land of Harvesters (LoH). It’s only in the LoH that the logos can be understood and used by educated individuals called harvesters. Point of The point of view is that of a young boy named Joey, a farm boy from 1750. (The year was chosen so the ideas ‘discovered’ are yet to be known in his world.) The LoL is populated with logologists (overseers of discovered logos), miners (giant creatures with glowing eyes that manage the logo mining sites), seers (members with the power to visualize the contents of a logo), diggers (dwarfs skilled at digging for buried logos), trolls, elves, and others. Miners have a special skill to sense the buried logos but are susceptible to their hidden ideas, causing them to take on bizarre characteristics of the yet-to-be discovered ideas. Young children from our world are needed to assist in persuading the miners to release their finds. The miners view those from the LoH as royalty and treat them as honored guests revealing things to them that they’ll tell no others. Pyramid of The longterm objective of those working in the LoL is to complete the Pyramid of Knowledge. Once the last idea, called the One, is harvested, the LoL and the LoH will merge, and all war, disease, and famine will end. Individual book summaries The Lost Lake In the first book, The Lost Lake Dig, the protagonist, Joey, is confronted by a strange man who transports him into the LoL where he joins an expedition with his long-lost best friend, a seer, and two digger dwarfs. A miner is acting strangely and is believed to have found an important logo. The Twisted Tree In the second book, The Twisted Tree Dig, Joey returns to the LoL to rescue a young dwarf friend who has been captured by a crazed miner under the influence of a logo. The In the final book of the trilogy, The One, Joey attends a dwarf wedding in the LoL and is stranded as the trolls revolt and threaten the future of the worlds by destroying the mining operations throughout the LoL. Small sampling of the ideas and harvesters presented in the books Computer Professor John Atanasoff and Mr. Clifford Berry (Atanasoff-Berry Computer), Charles Babbage Joseph and Étienne Montgolfier (balloonists), Wilber and Orville Wright Edward Jenner (vaccination), Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin Pony Expre...