'The Firefly Legacy' series rests on the camaraderie between the four main characters (Rebecca, Jin, Meera and Louise) as they attend school together, form the Firefly Club, patrol their community, interact with some of their more colorful neighbors and have adventures.

The ‘Legacy’ refers to the former Firefly Club members of which only three survive. These women have passed the mantle on to the next generation of girls, yet they remain active as an unseen guiding force. Through the actions of these three elderly women the young girls receive subtle (and not so subtle) prompts, which lead to their solving riddles, finding and exploring an underground tunnel system, uncovering dastardly plots, helping the community and keeping a record of their own club meetings in the ancient tome known as ‘The Treasury of Knowledge’. In this tome are the accounts of former club members known as ‘The Women of Yore’.

This series has no dragons, no witches nor vampires. There are no talking animals or high-tech futuristic devices to communicate with other worlds. There are no faeries or Arthurian knights or female ‘squires’ pretending to be male and going into battle. In fact it has no one with anything more sinister than the basic greed in human nature. It is firmly based in community.

And yet despite all that doesn’t appear in my stories, they have intrigue and enigmatic teachers. They have puzzling riddles to old treasures and cats that show the way out of dangerous paths. They have vegetable patches with unconventional fruit and grumpy neighbors, scary hedges, haunted houses, Hallowe’en dares that go horribly wrong plus a buffoonish librarian who thinks he is the everyday woman’s Adonis. In short, this series brings back the sweetness of childhood and gives it a new place within its old context – a context that is grounded in Community.

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