• Age: 7 to 10
• Grade: 2 to 5

Talk about the winter blahs. Sam: Dog Detective can't find a mystery anywhere. The sheepdog sleuth doesn't know how she's going to make it through another snowy season. But things begin to heat up when her friends, Jennie and Beth, visit a museum. There they see the mummy of a pharaoh who is said to walk the earth searching for his beloved missing dog. Now Sam -- who always feels she deserves the royal treatment -- has the mummy hot on her trail. Will she be able to elude this creepy corpse as he stalks Woodford looking for his shaggy white dog?

Mary Labatt is an editor and writer. She is the author of the Dog Detective Sam mystery series, the Sam and Friends graphic mystery novels, the Puppy Sam level one early readers and a novel called A Puppy is for Loving. With all these dog books you can guess what Mary does on her Clear Creek, Ontario farm. She breeds and raises Rough Collies and Welsh Springer Spaniels. In the picture you can see Mary with two of her collie mothers, Annabel and Chloe.

Mary Labatt's profile page

• Winner, Our Choice, Canadian Children’s Book Centre