The Lost Islands Club

Three cousins. Three Caribbean countries. Two hundred years of secrets waiting to be found.

The Lost Islands Club is the prestige line of the Tradewinds family library: a middle-grade mystery series where the cases are not invented - they are uncovered. Buried treasure, forgotten graves, stolen artifacts, and the real history of the Caribbean, told through the eyes of three kids who are not afraid to dig.

The premise

When eleven-year-old Kaya learns that the ancient silk cotton tree in her Guyanese village guards a two-hundred-year-old secret, she calls the only people she trusts: her cousins. Together they uncover something far bigger than treasure - and learn that some secrets are not buried. Some secrets remember.

From that first case, the Club is born: three cousins from three Caribbean countries who travel the region solving mysteries rooted in its history, its folklore, and the stories the region has kept for centuries.

Meet the Club

• Kaya (Guyana) - the folklorist. She reads the land, knows her grandmother’s stories, and trusts her instincts.
• Micah (Trinidad) - the researcher. Quiet, brilliant with data, faster on a keyboard than out loud.
• Zara (Jamaica) - the detective. She notices everything, carries a notebook everywhere, and never lets a detail go.

Three countries. Three gifts. One promise: we do not run, and we do not forget.

Where the mysteries travel

Guyana’s rainforest. Kingston’s National Gallery. A Port of Spain masquerade. A Bridgetown plantation house. The Club moves across the region, and every place hides a different chapter of the same buried history.

What the series is really about

Underneath the adventure, the series asks a question every diaspora child eventually faces: who gets remembered, and who gets erased? The cases turn on memory, inheritance, and the people history left out of the record. The past, in these books, is not over - it is just waiting.

The book roadmap

A five-book arc:

1. The Secret of the Silk Cotton Tree - Guyana. A village tree, a hidden tunnel, and a developer who wants both gone.
2. The Secret of the Kingston Gallery - Jamaica. A stolen Maroon artifact and a framed innocent man.
3. The Secret of the Carnival Mask - Trinidad. A masquerade, a sabotage, and a hidden identity.
4. The Secret of the Crop Over Cross - Barbados. A family heirloom and the long shadow of the sugar estates.
5. The Secret of the Seven Islands - the whole region. Every case connects.

For classrooms and libraries

The Lost Islands Club is built to do double duty: a page-turning mystery and a doorway into Caribbean history, folklore, and heritage. Each book is designed to support discussion of memory, identity, and the region’s past - a natural fit for school reading lists, library collections, and heritage-month programming. Educator materials will accompany the series.

Ages 8-12. Coming to the Tradewinds family library.