When twelve-year-old Charlotte is uprooted from New York City and forced to move to sweaty, sticky, roach-infested Florida, she’ll do anything to get back home – even conspiring with ghosts. Everyone in the kooky seaside town of Casaluna is obsessed with the supernatural, and Charlie finds herself living in the town’s most infamous haunted house, inhabited by a trio of rambunctious ghosts who were cursed for stealing a dead man’s diamond.

When she learns that the missing jewel is still in the house, she gets a brilliant idea: find the diamond and sell it so her family can afford to move back to New York. But she quickly learns that undoing a centuries’ old curse isn’t that simple, especially when she’s pitted against the school bully and three unruly spirits. In the end, she’ll discover that the only way to rid herself of ghosts and curses may be the one thing she fears the most: confronting the painful past that haunts her.

Here is an excerpt of The Curse of the Dead Man's Diamond. 

It was easy to believe in myths in Casaluna, a strip of land snaking up the Florida coast between the swamp and the sea. On one side, the dense bog provided ample hid- ing places for beasts—real and imagined—to slither and stalk. On the other side stretched the ocean—deep, endless, and unfathomable. Either way they looked, Casalunites were peering at something they couldn’t understand. It’s no wonder they made up stories to explain away their ques-
tions and their fears.

When Ada Winklevoss was a child, old wives’ tales were the only kind of tales she knew. Like the one about the Dead Man’s Diamond. Back then, Casalunites buried their dead at sea. Some people claimed it was because of their bone- deep connection to the water, but an honest Casalunite would tell you, they simply had nowhere else to put them.

Out they’d sail, in black cloaks buttoned to the chin, with somber faces and teary eyes (because of grief or wind or both). They’d venture out seven leagues at least, trying not to stumble over the dearly departed laid out in the center of the vessel, wrapped in oilcloth. When the waters were deep enough not to send the body back to shore, they’d say a quiet prayer and slip the remains into the brine, weighted down with a chain or, if it was a military man, a cannon-ball. A splash and a gurgle, and that was the end of it.

Usually.

Among the many superstitions of the Casalunites was the one about the ferryman. Given their geography, they naturally assumed another body of water awaited them on the other side of this life. And the only way to get across to their final resting place was to pay the ferryman. So Casa- lunites sewed coins and other valuables into the funeral sacking—Grandma’s brooch or Father’s priceless pocket watch. As far as Ada could tell, the bereaved on the boat were mourning partly for the deceased and partly for the riches they insisted on taking with them.

Every so often, the binds would break, and a loose coin would drift back to shore. But here was the rub: it was bad luck to take the possessions of the dead. If a Casalunite found a glinting gold coin in the surf beneath his feet, he’d toss it back into the sea immediately. The misfortune it would bring would outweigh its value tenfold. Everyone knew that. And taking a dead man’s diamond? That was unheard of. That was an offense worthy of a curse.

But Ada’s husband, Arthur, didn’t believe in such things. He had traveled, studied architecture in Europe, and returned home an intellectual and a paragon of reason. Sure, he lived in a forgotten seaside town, but he was still a modern man at his core, as he made a point of telling anyone who would listen. He charted his course based on science—not superstition.

So on that fateful day when Ada spotted something on the shore, oscillating in the silt and foam like a lost sea creature, it was Arthur who knelt beside it to investigate, poking it curiously with his cane. He determined that it was fabric— fine silk, at that. Against his wife’s objections, he plucked it from the sea and shook off the sand. The slick handkerchief bore a monogram in the corner: SLG. The initials of one Sidney Lamont Green, recently deceased millionaire and crotchety old brute. When a diamond tumbled out, Ada shrieked and pressed her gloved hand to her lips. Arthur smiled and picked it up. It was as big as a walnut.

And shaped—unnervingly—like a skull.

Christyne Morrell is the author of Trex and Kingdom of Secrets. When she’s not writing for kids, Christyne is busy raising one. She is a corporate attorney, and in her spare time enjoys reading, baking, and watching House Hunters marathons. 
Find her online at https://christynewrites.com/

Excerpt copyright © 2024 by Christyne Morrell from The Curse of the Dead Man's Diamond. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.