Nate, the great detective, and his dog, Sludge, are off to San Francisco! They're going to visit Nate's cousin Olivia Sharp. She's a detective, too, and a very busy one.

Olivia isn't around to solve her case number 22. Her client, Duncan, has lost his joke book. He tells Nate that if the book isn't found--and soon--the world will come to an end. Nate takes the case. He and Sludge cruise up and down and around San Francisco in the limo, tracking down clues. Sticky, icky clues, big and small clues, all-around-the-town clues that take them to a pancake house, over the Golden Gate Bridge, and finally to a place that seems wrong but could be right. Can Nate the Great keep the world from coming to an end? Can he solve his first out-of-town case?

WINNER | 2004
New Jersey Garden State Children's Book Award

Praise for the Nate the Great Series

★ “Kids will like Nate the Great.” —School Library Journal, Starred Review

“A consistently entertaining series.” —Booklist

“Loose, humorous chalk and watercolor spots help turn this beginning reader into a page-turner.” —Publishers Weekly

“Nate, Sludge, and all their friends have been delighting beginning readers for years.” —Kirkus Reviews

“They don’t come any cooler than Nate the Great.” —The Huffington Post

Born in Portland, Maine, in 1928, Marjorie Weinman Sharmat dreamed of becoming a writer. Little did she know that she would be the author of more than 130 books for children of all ages, which have been translated into 17 languages. Another of her childhood dreams, that of becoming a detective, has also been realized in her most popular Nate the Great series, begun in 1972. Many of Sharmat's books have been Literary Guild selections and chosen as Books of the Year by the Library of Congress. Several have been made into films for television, including Nate the Great Goes Undercover, winner of the Los Angeles International Children's Film Festival Award. Nate the Great Saves the King of Sweden has been named one of the New York Public Library's 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing. View titles by Marjorie Weinman Sharmat

Mitchell Sharmat, a graduate of Harvard University, has written numerous picture books, easy readers, and novels. He is best known for the classic Gregory, the Terrible Eater, a Reading Rainbow Feature Selection and a New York Times Critics’ Pick. In his honor, The Sharmat Collection, displaying the books he has written, was established at the Harvard Graduate School of Education by the Munroe C. Gutman Library. View titles by Mitchell Sharmat

Martha Weston was a colorblind illustrator and children’s author who has more than 60 books to her name. Of her work, Weston said, “the best part of writing and illustrating is creating a world of my own—generally a goofy one—and feeling like I am stepping into it." She passed away at the age of 56. View titles by Martha Weston