Before Lara Croft, there was Vesper Holly, a 19th-century teenager who hungers for international adventure, among other things. "Miss Vesper Holly has the digestive talents of a goat and the mind of a chess master. She is familiar with half a dozen languages and can swear fluently in all of them," according to The Illyrian Adventure's narrator, Professor Brinton Garrett, who also happens to be our hero's legal guardian as well as her reluctant sidekick. "She does not hesitate to risk life and limb—mine as well as her own. No doubt she has other qualities as yet undiscovered. I hope not."In Lloyd Alexander's first Vesper Holly adventure—he followed it with five more installments, the most recent being 2005's The Xanadu Adventure—the 16-year-old Philadelphian drags Professor Garrett, or "Brinnie," as she calls him, to Illyria, a small kingdom in the Adriatic Sea, where she plans to investigate one of her late father's hunches and unearth a hidden treasure. If she also manages to resolve a brewing civil war and enjoy a bit of romance on her "vacation," all the better! The Illyrian Adventure is bursting with action, humor, and lighthearted fun. —Robert Cass
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