AD>Ghost of the Hardy Boys

• McFarlane was among the first bestselling ghost writers in history.
  
  
• McFarlane wrote the first twenty-one Hardy Boys adventures. From The Tower Treasure in 1927 to The Phantom Freighter in 1947, it was McFarlane who turned Stratemeyer's bare outlines into full-fledged classics filled with perilous scrapes, chums, breakneck races to the finish-and a higher quality of writing than had ever been seen in books of this kind before. Even though McFarlane was only receiving a fee-no royalties-he wanted to make these books the very best they could be. By the time McFarlane passed in 1977, unofficial estimates of sales of the Hardy Boys series topped 50 million copies.
  
  
• Ghost of the Hardy Boys is a fascinating, funny, and always charming look back at a vanished era for writers-in book publishing and journalism ("The most important thing is to get the names right," one newspaper editor told him. "Nobody likes to see his name spelled wrong. Remember that. And don't use the word very in a sentence. I hate it.") It is for anyone who loves a great story about making a living through words.
  
  
• ARC mailing to retailer A-list