Alvin Fernald, Foreign Trader (Alvin Fernald Mysteries)

Alvin Fernald’s “Magnificent Brain” has a life of its own. In fact, somehow or other it has come up with the winning grand prize recipe in a candy-making contest—and no one, including Alvin, can figure out quite how it happened. Now, as guests of the Kitchenmate Appliance Company, Alvin, his friend Shoie, and his sister Daphne (“The Pest”) take off for a whirlwind tour of Europe. Having just come to the edge of flunking a class in economics (Magnificent Brain, where were you?), Alvin is about to be given a practical—and perilous—lesson in international trade. Mystery, ingenuity—and, well bicycles—hilariously collide in this next book about Alvin by the former editor of Popular Mechanics Magazine, Clifford B. Hicks.