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Max Tilt #2
80 Days or Die
The New York Times bestselling author of the Seven Wonders series and of books in the 39 Clues series, Peter Lerangis, brings us the hair-raising, edge-of-your-seat second installment of the Max Tilt trilogy.
When thirteen-year-old Max Tilt stumbled across his great-great-great-grandfather Jules Verne’s unfinished, unpublished manuscript, The Lost Treasures, he thought he had the answer to all his problems, but nothing in life is ever that easy. With his mom’s illness getting worse again, Max needs to figure out a way to save his family—now more than ever.
So Max and his cousin Alex revisit The Lost Treasures, and they find a clue that just might be the key to a cure. It’s the story of Verne’s seemingly impossible recovery from a near-fatal gunshot wound. Somehow, after being shot, Verne didn’t just survive, he thrived. And the book hints that he was only able to do so after collecting magical healing elements that he’d saved from a race around the world.
Piecing together hints from Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days and his lost manuscript, Max and Alex realize there’s a way to save Max’s mom if they’re daring enough to try.
It’s a race against time in the second installment of the action-packed adventure series from master storyteller and New York Times bestselling author Peter Lerangis.
When thirteen-year-old Max Tilt stumbled across his great-great-great-grandfather Jules Verne’s unfinished, unpublished manuscript, The Lost Treasures, he thought he had the answer to all his problems, but nothing in life is ever that easy. With his mom’s illness getting worse again, Max needs to figure out a way to save his family—now more than ever.
So Max and his cousin Alex revisit The Lost Treasures, and they find a clue that just might be the key to a cure. It’s the story of Verne’s seemingly impossible recovery from a near-fatal gunshot wound. Somehow, after being shot, Verne didn’t just survive, he thrived. And the book hints that he was only able to do so after collecting magical healing elements that he’d saved from a race around the world.
Piecing together hints from Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days and his lost manuscript, Max and Alex realize there’s a way to save Max’s mom if they’re daring enough to try.
It’s a race against time in the second installment of the action-packed adventure series from master storyteller and New York Times bestselling author Peter Lerangis.
405 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 24, 2018
24 people are currently reading
160 people want to read
About the author
Peter Lerangis
157 books794 followersLerangis's work includes The Viper's Nest and The Sword Thief, two titles in the children's-book series The 39 Clues, the historical novel Smiler's Bones, the YA dark comedy-adventure novel wtf, the Drama Club series, the Spy X series, the Watchers series, the Abracadabra series, and the Antarctica two-book adventure, as well ghostwriting for series such as the Three Investigators, the Hardy Boys Casefiles, Sweet Valley Twins, and more than forty books in the series The Baby-sitters Club and its various spin-offs.[1] He has also written novels based on film screenplays, including The Sixth Sense, Sleepy Hollow, and Beauty and the Beast, and five video game novelizations in the Worlds of Power series created by Seth Godin.[2] As a ghostwriter he has been published under the name A. L. Singer.[3]
Lerangis is the son of a retired New York Telephone Company employee and a retired public-elementary-school secretary, who raised him in Freeport, New York on Long Island. He graduated from Harvard University with a degree in biochemistry, while acting in musicals[4] and singing with and musically directing the a cappella group the Harvard Krokodiloes,[5][6] before moving to New York. He worked there as an actor[7] and freelance copy editor for eight years before becoming an author.[8]
In 2003, Lerangis was chosen by First Lady Laura Bush to accompany her to the first Russian Book Festival, hosted by Russian First Lady Lyudmila Putina in Moscow.[9][10]Authors R. L. Stine (Goosebumps) and Marc Brown (the Arthur the Aardvark series) also made the trip with Bush.[9]
Also in 2003, Lerangis was commissioned by the United Kingdom branch of Scholastic to write X-Isle, one of four books that would relaunch the Point Horror series there.[11] A sequel, Return to X-Isle, was published in 2004.
In 2007, Scholastic announced the launch of a new historical mystery series called The 39 Clues, intended to become a franchise.[12] Lerangis wrote the third book in the series, The Sword Thief, published in March 2009.[13][14][15] On March 3, 2009, Scholastic announced that Lerangis would write the seventh book in the series, The Viper's Nest.[14][16]
Lerangis lives in New York City with his wife, musician Tina deVaron, and their sons Nick and Joe.[17]
Lerangis is the son of a retired New York Telephone Company employee and a retired public-elementary-school secretary, who raised him in Freeport, New York on Long Island. He graduated from Harvard University with a degree in biochemistry, while acting in musicals[4] and singing with and musically directing the a cappella group the Harvard Krokodiloes,[5][6] before moving to New York. He worked there as an actor[7] and freelance copy editor for eight years before becoming an author.[8]
In 2003, Lerangis was chosen by First Lady Laura Bush to accompany her to the first Russian Book Festival, hosted by Russian First Lady Lyudmila Putina in Moscow.[9][10]Authors R. L. Stine (Goosebumps) and Marc Brown (the Arthur the Aardvark series) also made the trip with Bush.[9]
Also in 2003, Lerangis was commissioned by the United Kingdom branch of Scholastic to write X-Isle, one of four books that would relaunch the Point Horror series there.[11] A sequel, Return to X-Isle, was published in 2004.
In 2007, Scholastic announced the launch of a new historical mystery series called The 39 Clues, intended to become a franchise.[12] Lerangis wrote the third book in the series, The Sword Thief, published in March 2009.[13][14][15] On March 3, 2009, Scholastic announced that Lerangis would write the seventh book in the series, The Viper's Nest.[14][16]
Lerangis lives in New York City with his wife, musician Tina deVaron, and their sons Nick and Joe.[17]
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
April 22, 2024
if you're a Jules verne fan, you're gonna LOVE this book series
September 4, 2019
First sentence: No one ever paid attention to the man with the drooping eye.
Premise/plot: Max Tilt: 80 Days or Die is the second book in a new series by Peter Lerangis. The plot has/had the potential to be great. Max is a descendant of French writer, Jules Verne. Verne’s legacy lives on...in a series of codes and puzzles. Max and Alex went on quite the quest in the first book. Max thought the solution to his biggest problem could be saved by money—lots of it. But it turns out that money can’t buy everything. Max is shocked by this—adult readers shouldn’t be. It turns out that the next quest will be a matter of life and death.
Verne’s mysterious letters indicate that by combining a series of fantastic near-impossible-to-find ingredients together that any and every sickness/illness can be cured. Death could be thwarted if and only if you possess this magical concoction.
Evelyn is his friend with a terminal illness. She only has a few months to live. This is enough to motivate him to do something he thought he’d never do again—risk his own life to trek the globe on an dangerous adventure. Mid-trip he learns that his mom’s cancer has returned. Max is stunned!!! He never expected that...after all it was the money he found that sent her to “the best doctors and best hospitals” that money could buy! Now it is more important than ever that the quest is successful. But it won’t be easy...bad guys come in all shapes, sizes, ages, and genders.
My thoughts: I found the second book to be obnoxious. Clearly both books ask readers to suspend disbelief. Clearly both are fantasy novels even though both are set in the “real world.” It isn’t the only middle grade novel where all adults are either absent, negligent, or evil.
The fact that the book trivializes serious real-life issues is what I find so annoying. It’s one thing to go on a quest to save the world from...demons, wizards, vampires, aliens, etc. It is quite another to go on a quest for a cure-all for EVERY disease or malady (gunshot wound or cancer). (Verne used it after a gunshot wound.) I found the book to be over the top ridiculous...and predictable.
Whether any child likes it or not...some diseases do prove terminal. Traveling the world on your own...placing a person’s wellbeing on your doing so...it’s just too much. Max doesn’t need to feel responsible for the lives of his friend and mom.
Premise/plot: Max Tilt: 80 Days or Die is the second book in a new series by Peter Lerangis. The plot has/had the potential to be great. Max is a descendant of French writer, Jules Verne. Verne’s legacy lives on...in a series of codes and puzzles. Max and Alex went on quite the quest in the first book. Max thought the solution to his biggest problem could be saved by money—lots of it. But it turns out that money can’t buy everything. Max is shocked by this—adult readers shouldn’t be. It turns out that the next quest will be a matter of life and death.
Verne’s mysterious letters indicate that by combining a series of fantastic near-impossible-to-find ingredients together that any and every sickness/illness can be cured. Death could be thwarted if and only if you possess this magical concoction.
Evelyn is his friend with a terminal illness. She only has a few months to live. This is enough to motivate him to do something he thought he’d never do again—risk his own life to trek the globe on an dangerous adventure. Mid-trip he learns that his mom’s cancer has returned. Max is stunned!!! He never expected that...after all it was the money he found that sent her to “the best doctors and best hospitals” that money could buy! Now it is more important than ever that the quest is successful. But it won’t be easy...bad guys come in all shapes, sizes, ages, and genders.
My thoughts: I found the second book to be obnoxious. Clearly both books ask readers to suspend disbelief. Clearly both are fantasy novels even though both are set in the “real world.” It isn’t the only middle grade novel where all adults are either absent, negligent, or evil.
The fact that the book trivializes serious real-life issues is what I find so annoying. It’s one thing to go on a quest to save the world from...demons, wizards, vampires, aliens, etc. It is quite another to go on a quest for a cure-all for EVERY disease or malady (gunshot wound or cancer). (Verne used it after a gunshot wound.) I found the book to be over the top ridiculous...and predictable.
Whether any child likes it or not...some diseases do prove terminal. Traveling the world on your own...placing a person’s wellbeing on your doing so...it’s just too much. Max doesn’t need to feel responsible for the lives of his friend and mom.
March 3, 2019
This is book 2 of the adventures of Max and his cousin Alex. They are related to Jules Verne and his stories take them around the world, facing dangers and cunning puzzles. In this one, they are trying to find a magical cure which requires them to go to several locations to find the specific ingredients. They must try to keep the secret ingredients away from their nemesis in order to save the life of one of their best friends.
August 22, 2020
Close on the heels of Bk1, Max (and his cousin Alex) search for the ingredients of a medicine that could save the life of a friend. But in order to do so, they'll have to recreate the journey that inspired their ancestor Jules Verne's famous story, Around the World in Eighty Days. It's not just a race against time. It's a race against rivals.
Fast-paced contemporary quest. Good fun.
Fast-paced contemporary quest. Good fun.
November 28, 2021
i vandalized my copy of this book out of anger. and one of the causes of my anger is the cover. THE HOT AIR BALLOON WAS DESCRIBED AS WHITE AND ALEX IS A DARK SKINNED, CURLY HAIRED WOMAN. WHERE IS THAT WOMAN IN THE COVER???? THE SAME CAN BE SAID FOR THE 1ST BOOK TOO. the only reason why i didn't give this a 1 star rating is because i was right about bitsy being a traitor.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 25, 2020
More like 3.5. I think I liked the first one better, but it was still good. Well described non-stop action from start to finish. I don’t understand why the protagonists keep trusting random people to help them on their quests (especially after the first book), but it’s still an enjoyable story.
November 21, 2018
B. fiction, teen, adventure, fantasy, Jules Verne, series, (Max Tilt, #2)
July 6, 2019
Another amazing adventure!
May 20, 2020
First one was great, this one almost as good.
December 9, 2020
Really good book like the first one had a lot of twists am looking forward for the next one
February 21, 2021
Awesome fast paced read for children 10 and up. Action, adventure and mystery combined to create a children’s novel based on Jules Verne novels.
Read
July 10, 2021With E
September 12, 2022
Bitchie could do better
I read that on greek so i do not know if i misspelled her name sorry.
I read that on greek so i do not know if i misspelled her name sorry.
October 20, 2022
Have to read in order. Captivating storyline, couldn't put it down.
January 21, 2024
Great young readers book. Intense as well. Going to hand to my 8 yr old to read next.
January 2, 2019
This was an okay, well-written book, but I wasn't overly impressed. I didn't read the first installment, so maybe it just took too long to get into Max's character... which I never really did...
November 6, 2020
After Max's first adventure, you know the mystery will be based on something his great-great-ancestor, Jules Verne, discovered and kept secret.
This time Max and Alex start off rich from the proceeds of their first adventure but they quickly discover money can't buy health. At Basile's funeral, a homeless man with one droopy eye slips a cypher into their hands. There are signs Max's new friend Evie is sick, and his uncle, Verne, writes about a cure-all for just about anything.
Solving the cypher sets them on course for the cure, and while they're pursuing it, and the man with one droopy eye is pursuing them, Max learns his mother's cancer has come back.
If Max and Alex can find the cure first, who will they save? Max's mom or his friend Evie? Can he save them both?
I won't spoil the ending. You'll have to read to find out what happens.
A fun read!
Visit my blog for more great middle grade book recommendations, free teaching materials for books, and fiction writing tips: http://amb.mystrikingly.com/
This time Max and Alex start off rich from the proceeds of their first adventure but they quickly discover money can't buy health. At Basile's funeral, a homeless man with one droopy eye slips a cypher into their hands. There are signs Max's new friend Evie is sick, and his uncle, Verne, writes about a cure-all for just about anything.
Solving the cypher sets them on course for the cure, and while they're pursuing it, and the man with one droopy eye is pursuing them, Max learns his mother's cancer has come back.
If Max and Alex can find the cure first, who will they save? Max's mom or his friend Evie? Can he save them both?
I won't spoil the ending. You'll have to read to find out what happens.
A fun read!
Visit my blog for more great middle grade book recommendations, free teaching materials for books, and fiction writing tips: http://amb.mystrikingly.com/
Want to read
April 28, 2018Max Tilt, #2
Currently reading
August 22, 2018I'm still not sure whether to trust Nigel. I sorta think that the story about his wife and daughter is a fake and that he's still working for Gloria. Poor Bitsy. First her step-father, and now her mother. Max, you shouldn't completely rely on the smells.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews