Stories Come to Life

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Stories Come to Life. I am your host, Kathryn Lopez Luker.  When Cress FINALLY convinces her mother to allow her to go to a house party with some friends from school, she thinks her life may make a dramatic change for the better. Maybe she will be approached by a magnificent boy who will share a secret world with her. Cress hopes so. Reality is a bit different. Maybe th...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Stories Come to Life. I am your host, Kathryn Lopez Luker.  In the first chapter today, Cress is filled with teenage emotion and melancholy. Flowers bloom so fleetingly, the raindrops on the lawn evaporate and disappear, and everything in life seems destined to degrade and disintegrate. Maybe Cress’s emotions come because the young man she loves doesn’t know she exists....

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Stories Come to Life. I am your host, Kathryn Lopez Luker.  Cress has tentatively reached the upper level of popularity in her high school. So, when a girl who REALLY wants to be Cress’s friend invites her to spend the night at her house, Cress is torn. Should she go and perhaps risk falling from the popularity heights, or could her approval perhaps raise Ina to that co...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Stories Come to Life. I am your host, Kathryn Lopez Luker.  Music lessons? Could Cress really want to take music lessons? All her life (so far) Cress has been decidedly AGAINST music lessons because they would be so dull as compared to hiking or swimming or doing anything outside. But that was before Cress met Mrs. Charlesbois. She is wonderful: elegant and artistic and...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Stories Come to Life. I am your host, Kathryn Lopez Luker.  This is the winter that Cress is thirteen years old. Cress is trying to find out what her “trademark” will be at school. Will she be a serious, sweet, and unknown person, or should she find a way to be known as “that Crazy Cress Delahanty”?  Then, later in the season, Cress will be performing in a dance recital...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Stories Come to Life. I am your host, Kathryn Lopez Luker.  Cress Delahanty is thirteen years old in today’s chapters. She has to navigate through the difficult time of her beloved grandmother’s passing, as well as trying to be a comfort to her grandfather. Then in late summer, she goes with her parents to the seaside village of Balboa where she knows Edwin and his fami...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Stories Come to Life. I am your host, Kathryn Lopez Luker.  This is the first episode of Cress Delahanty , a book I loved when I read it first years and years ago. The author, Jessamyn West, was born in 1902. She moved to Orange County, California in 1908 when there were citrus groves and rural areas filled with birdsong and open spaces. This is the setting of the story...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Stories Come to Life. I am your host, Kathryn Lopez Luker.  Poor Chet and Biff are STILL on the island! But they trust that the Hardy boys will send help to rescue them. What is confusing, is the sound of another motorboat cruising around the island. Could it be additional gangsters coming to rescue the bad guys? Here is the thrilling conclusion of The Hardy Boys in The...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Stories Come to Life. I am your host, Kathryn Lopez Luker.  Frank and Joe are able to sneak quietly back into the deep dark of the back cavern where their friends, Chet and Biff, are being held captive. Not only are they relieved to find them safe, but they have the keys to rescue them! But it isn’t easy to escape from the gangsters, as the slightest sound will awaken t...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Stories Come to Life. I am your host, Kathryn Lopez Luker.  Frank and Joe have an idea that their missing chums, Chet Morton and Biff Hooper, may have gone out to Blacksnake Island and run into trouble, so they head out to the island in their boat, Sleuth . Yes, there certainly is trouble on the island, and it doesn’t just come from the venomous blacksnakes that frequen...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Stories Come to Life. I am your host, Kathryn Lopez Luker.  Chet and Biff are missing! Can they have perished in the huge storm? Of course, Frank and Joe want to go out on their motorboat, the Sleuth, to try to find some evidence of their missing friends, but when their cantankerous old great-aunt Gertrude comes to visit, those plans might need to be put aside, as Aunt...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Stories Come to Life. I am your host, Kathryn Lopez Luker.  Here is the first episode in the FOURTH Hardy Boys’ book: The Missing Chums. When Chet Morton and Biff Hooper decide to take Biff’s father’s new motorboat on a trip up the Atlantic coast, the only thing that would make it better would be if Frank and Joe Hardy could join them. But they can’t. They have to stay...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Stories Come to Life. I am your host, Kathryn Lopez Luker.  Not even a threatening note will stop determined young Nancy Drew from keeping her commitment to visit the two maiden ladies who live in the Turnbull Mansion. She wants to help them figure out who is trying to scare them and make them think their house is haunted. Nancy tries and tries, but is there really a se...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Stories Come to Life. I am your host, Kathryn Lopez Luker.  Oh, the scrapes Nancy Drew gets herself in! At the beginning of this episode, we find her gagged, and bound hand and foot as a captive of three scoundrels: Tom Tozzle, Bud Mason, and the particularly mean Mary Mason, who seems to have a personal antipathy toward Nancy. How can she ever extricate herself from th...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Stories Come to Life. I am your host, Kathryn Lopez Luker. In 1930, the first three books in the Nancy Drew series were published at the same time in order to introduce the world to this brilliant young detective. The Bungalow Mystery is the third of Nancy’s adventures. In this episode, we find Nancy Drew and her chum, Helen Corning, who also appeared in the previous ad...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Stories Come to Life. I am your host, Kathryn Lopez Luker. Poor Laura Pendleton! Her new guardian seems like a terrible person. He’s not very kind to her, and poor Laura has to be uprooted from everything that’s comfortable and go live in the unknown bungalow on Melrose Lake.  In the meantime, Nancy and Helen are at the camp and it is with great reluctance that Nancy tu...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Stories Come to Life. I am your host, Kathryn Lopez Luker.  Nancy Drew really owes a large debt of gratitude to Laura Pendleton, who saved her life out on Moon Lake. So, she is happy to do something to help the girl escape from her cruel guardian. Nancy decides to visit Jacob Aborn and see if she can figure out some way to help Laura. Nancy’s resourceful bravery comes i...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Stories Come to Life. I am your host, Kathryn Lopez Luker. Brave Nancy Drew has a plan to help Laura Pendleton. She tried to confront Jacob Aborn, Laura’s cruel guardian, but she didn’t learn much from him. Nancy still feels there is something she could do. So, with her detective instincts on high alert, she decides to stealthily investigate Jacob Aborn’s bungalow, and...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Stories Come to Life. I am your host, Kathryn Lopez Luker.  In her attempt to rescue the REAL Jacob Aborn from the dungeon where he has been held captive, Nancy Drew has fallen into the clutches of the notorious Stumpy Dowd! One of her father’s friends told her how a person could free oneself after being tied up. Can she remember how to do it? In the meantime, Laura Pen...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Stories Come to Life. I am your host, Kathryn Lopez Luker.  What a wonderful surprise! Nancy Drew discovered that the car she flagged down on the lake road contained her father and Laura Pendleton! Now the three of them can put their skills together to try to stop dastardly Stumpy Dowd before he can cross the state line and escape with Laura’s entire fortune! In her blu...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Stories Come to Life. I am your host, Kathryn Lopez Luker.  Please enjoy Nancy’s story as she anticipates a glimpse of the famous Crandall jewels. Looking forward to this thrilling opportunity helps her endure the stress of interviewing many candidates for the position of housekeeper for the Drew household while faithful Hannah Gruen has gone to help her ailing sister....

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Stories Come to Life. I am your host, Kathryn Lopez Luker.  Somehow, Nancy Drew just can’t seem to avoid becoming involved in a thrilling mystery. With the puzzling disappearance of the Crandall jewels on her mind, Nancy is determined to help her friend regain her inheritance. But unlike other mysteries, this situation seems to have sprouted into an overabundance of clu...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Stories Come to Life. I am your host, Kathryn Lopez Luker.  Do you remember the sullen and rather rude girl who applied to become the housekeeper for the Drew family? Well, Mary Mason is back in the story! How could this rather shabbily dressed young woman have found enough money to purchase expensive dresses and other clothing items? Nancy has a faint suspicion that th...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Stories Come to Life. I am your host, Kathryn Lopez Luker.  If Nancy Drew is anything, she is a good friend to those in need. Emily Crandall certainly needs a good friend to help restore her inheritance and, if possible, clear her guardian, Mrs. Willoughby, from suspicion of the jewel theft. Nancy is doing all she can, even following the tiniest whiff of a clue no matte...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Stories Come to Life. I am your host, Kathryn Lopez Luker.  Who hasn’t heard of Nancy Drew, the girl detective? Here is the first volume of her adventures: The Secret of the Old Clock . In chapters one, two, and three, we meet Nancy and her father, and learn of her inquisitive and insightful personality. Old Josiah Crowley has died, and to the surprise of everyone, his...