Book #3 in the Tom Swift 100th Anniversary Project. With both a motor cycle and a speedy motorboat to his credit, and after rescuing balloonist John Sharp, the two of them, with some help from Tom's best friend, Ned Newton, construct a radically different airship. Part airplane and part dirigible, the Red Cloud is a work of wonder. Tom, John and Mr. Wakefield Damon set out on a flying adventure covering much of the East Coast and the South of the United States as they seek fun and excitement. They get it aplenty if the form of townspeople trying to shoot them down, sheriffs trying to arrest them, and they nearly lose their lives when a gigantic forest fire sucks the Red Cloud downward toward the searing flames. Little do they know that many of their troubles are based on a false accusation against Tom by his old nemesis Andy Foger. It is a race against time for them to get back to try to clear Tom's name. ------------------------- This book has been substantially rewritten to remove outright racism and to enhance the mechanical and technical interests. Many books of this era used sentence structures, certain words and even punctuation in ways that can be confusing to younger readers today. So, every effort has been made to alleviate this issue while retaining the flavor of a story first told more than a century before.
About the Author: Thomas Hudson either writes as multiple authors (Victor Appleton, Victor Appleton II, Clarence Young IV, T. Edward Fox, etc.) or they all write as him. In any case, he is prolific in authoring Tom Swift adventures and short stories. He lives and writes, but no longer works, somewhere in the great Pacific Northwest, nestled among a variety of trees. He has discovered a love of writing as well as a talent for cultivating ingrown toenails. Painful ones. Mr. Hudson was laid off once along with about 3,500 others in a "great purge" to make shareholders happy. Most of the laid off employees were shareholders and very few were happy. He went on to work exactly 100 days for a major computer chip manufacturer. Everything was going well until the afternoon of the first day... it went downhill from that point on, culminating in a "Must Attend!" holiday party where he led his team in a caroling contest. They sang God Rest Te Merry Gentlemen. Well, at least half of it was. The other half was the middle portion of the theme from Gilligan's Island (Try it, you'll see that it really works!). Nobody applauded much although several people came up to him to say it was one of teh funniest things they had ever hears, "But my manager was standing next to me so I didn't dare laugh. Sorry!" Sorry, my ---!