Kipton Chronicles - Series by Royal Fireworks Press

In the first novel of the Kipton series, Kipton is a 14-year-old girl and Gruff is a fully rea-soning stuffed teddy bear (an extension of Kipton’s subconsciousness) who talks to Kipton. He is a medium for her own inner cognitions. They become an investigative duo trying to find the murderer of Kipton’s ingenious Uncle Charlie. The setting is an Earth-colony on Mars, called the Pile, “a huge building covering 200 acres, rising a dozen levels, honey-combed with corridors and residential apartments, and spotted with scientific and commercial complexes.” Here scientific research is mixed with economic greed. Detailed descriptions are precise, yet so smooth that the reader gathers them in effortlessly. Central figures are Kipton, her father and step mother and Jack. Their characterization is full-bodied; a major focus of the story is their interaction. The plot-line is rich with twists, motivations, alternate motivations and clues.

In Kipton And The Ovoid Heike and Daddy are now married. Gruff is spoken to less frequently because Kipton is growing up. Handsome Jack returns as her partner detective. Again the setting is Mars, The Pile and surface expeditions. Life on Mars has been discovered, but, before the discoverer can pinpoint the spot for the follow-up scientific crew, he is murdered. With his last breaths of life, he draws a picture clue. Latin and nursery rhymes help Kipton solve this case.

Kipton in Wonderland. Kipton confronts espionage, assassination, and martian-style economics in her third adventure. She joins forces with Friedel, a classmate of German origin who has just discovered girls. They must solve a murder in a virtual-reality theater.
The Pile’s businesses, those that manufacture and control air and water and choose what is imported from Earth, are regulated by UNASA. A radical group, Free Mars, espouses the overthrow of UNASA in the name of democracy and self-regulatory free enterprise. Its real aim is to decontrol prices. A UNASA undercover agent has discovered the identity of the company behind Free Mars. But before he can pass on this information, he is murdered in A virtural reality “Alice in Wonderland” as Kipton and Friedel watch. They saw the murder, the murderer, the weapon...didn’t they? Nothing may be as it seems. In this adventure the reader explores virtual reality, logonomically enhanced programs which can convince people of their reality and in extreme cases, affect them physically and psychologically.

Kipton and The Monkeys Uncle. Bored with daily life on the Pile, Kipton gladly accepts Nikolai’s invitation to spend some vacation with his family at West O’ Mars, his family’s estate outpost a quarter of the way around Mars. Nikolai is of Russian origin. She goes with Dr. Burundi, who was to attend a scientific conference to examine a huge diamond “find” that could be an ancient artifact—proof that Mars had been inhabited. Just as the conference begins, the diamond mysteriously vanishes. Braving a horrible floating head in her room at night, Kipton’s attention to seemingly unrelated details solves the case.

Kipton: Murder on Stage begins when Kipton’s class at school is performing a play, Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap. The curriculum includes a study of a dead body, teacher credentials, student oddities, and mass hypnosis. Kipton sticks to her studies and eventually finds a solution to the murder. This novel provides a view of some of the educational practices on Mars and of the student culture that is associated with it. It also raises questions about the extent of national culture which is carried from various countries on Earth to Mars

Kipton and the Tower of Time chronicles another Kipton visit to the West O’ Mars, where a mysterious tower seems to offer the possibility of time travel. The Tower of Time gives the appearance of being an ancient artifact, left behind by an advanced civilization which used a set of symbols no one seems able to comprehend. When things go badly wrong on a trip Kipton takes with a group of scientists, Kipton is drawn into solving yet another mystery.

Kipton and the Christmas Gift. Kipton meets some children whose widowed mother does not have the means to provide a happy Christmas. Christmas is not a universal holiday on Mars because it must be reckoned from the terrestrial calendar and falls twice in the martian year. However, Kipton and her friends arrange a Christmas for the children. But when a Shakespeare-quoting, rotund scientist playing Santa falls over dead, Christmas assumes new meaning for Kipton. And when Jack appears with mistletoe, we know that Kipton is growing up. For the first time, she has the full backing of her father in her sleuthing, because the authorities have arrested a Marsaire secretary rather than investigating extensively to find the real killer.

Kipton and The Android is a very intellectually challenging mystery. An android kills its creator in violation of its commandments, and the philosophic and logic implications are fully exploited by the author to set Kipton on an investigation that stretches her and the reader. A sub-theme of this novel is the language of flowers.

Kipton and The I Ching. An introduction to Chinese culture and the thrust of the Chinese government to gain a solid foothold on Mars by building a monorail between two colonies. The leader of the Chinese enterprise is murdered just after his daughter announces that she intends to marry a man against her father’s wishes. The murder occurs at Kipton’s birthday party, and her guests are suspects.

Kipton and The Voodoo Curse. To solve a crime involving naturally occurring poisons and their uses, Kipton strives to develop an understanding of another of Earth’s cultures as it has been transported to Mars. This time, her good friend Daphne is in love with an older man, who becomes the target of a voodoo curse.

Kipton and The Caves of Mars. An expedition to study plant and animal life forms discovered in a cave forces decisions by the expedition about whether it will pursue a scientific or intuitive approach to attempt to communicate with the life forms, and the reader is nudged by proponents of both methods to take a side. When a member of the expe-dition is killed, Kipton is once again on familiar footing investigating the murder. In the course of her activities she makes contact with the martian life forms...and gets help from them.

Kipton and The Monorail Murder. Kipton and her good friend Akimi are off to a distant habitat to sell androids to an industrialist who has an expansive vision of Mars future. On their return journey, a chance companion on the monorail dies, and Kipton soon learns that the young victim was an agent investigating the very industrialist they had met with. This time it is with the blessings of the authorities and her own father that Kipton swings into investigative action.

Kipton takes part in an expedition to one of the martian moons. There the party encounters a very low gravity, which presents dangers of flying away forever into space. And unaccountably, there are dinosaurs on Phobos! It all becomes a mystery that only Kipton can solve.

Sporting competitions are geared to martian gravity and the colonists life-styles. These are the first games on Mars, and emotions run high. A handsome, dark stranger seems to steal Kipton’s heart...until a murder puts things back into perspective.

Scientists on Mars seem to have solved the problem of transmitting matter. Their machine is blamed for the disappearance of a scientist with his papers. Gruff and Kipton run the risk of disappearing similarly. But everyone is together at the end. And Jack finally asks for Kipton’s hand

Kipton is one of the founders of Martian Maidens, a group modeled on the scouts on Earth.. Kipton, now an “elderly” teen, befriends a young girl, Kellianne, with many of her own detecting qualities. They work together when death interrupts the camping trip Kipton has helped to arrange.

Kipton is visiting universities to try to decide where she will go for her higher education. Things take a turn for the worse at one institution of higher learning, and Kipton is forced to give a course of instruction in investigation. Kellianne is one of the party, and she continues to learn from Kipton.

Kipton has gone to University, where she finds adults are as prone to mischief and mayhem as everywhere else she has been. At the end of the volume, Kipton gives Gruff to Kellianne, and hands over her unofficial position of girl detective on Mars to Kellianne.

Save $43 by ordering the Full Set of 18 Kipton novels for $100.00