Adventurous Ali: Temple of the Monkey God: Adventurous Ali, #1

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental

Copyright © 2019 Tyler H. Jolley

Cover Design by

Interior Layout by Melissa Williams Design

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Tyler H. Jolley

Bedtimes stories are a powerful thing, especially when you’re telling them to your child. My daughter’s imagination challenged me to create a story that made bedtime her favorite part of the day. I hope this book brings your daughter or son as much joy as it’s brought mine.

For my daughter, Olivia

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

About the Author

Chapter 1

Alison Liv Isner, better known to her friends and family as Ali, was nose deep in a book. Typical. And as usual, it was going to get her in trouble. She felt a sharp pain shoot up her shin as she walked, and a loud crash confirmed that, yes, she had done it again.

Oh no, Ali said. Tommy must have moved the pick axes.

Ali! her dad called out from the front of the store. Get back to the storage room and wait.

This was the third time this week she’d walked into something. She swore Tommy, her dad’s only employee, had moved racks in the shop to obstruct her reading path. Ali loved to read. And she loved to read and walk around her father’s store.

It wasn’t her fault this time. Not really. Ali had been waiting six years to read her mother’s journal. Her dad had promised her she could read about her mom’s adventures once she achieved her gold feather in archery. She’d attained that level one week ago, on her eleventh birthday. Ever since then, she’d spent every free moment devouring her mom’s memories and adventures.

Ali had lost her mother when she was just five years old. Mom had disappeared during an archaeological dig. That’s all anyone had told Ali. Her mom had gone in early one morning to dig and had never come home.

So, for the last six years it had just been Ali and her father. Her dad ran an archaeological supply store called Field and Excavation, Inc.: For all your archaeological needs. The equipment store also happened to be their home for now.

The Great Depression had made her father’s business falter enough that he and Ali had to give up their home to live in the back storage room. Ali was grateful for a few curious, wealthy adventurers who kept the business afloat.

The economic crisis was bad. And stores like the Isner’s were usually empty.

Ali took the long way to the storage room. She passed the front windows of the store, wishing she could just go play in the street instead of being stuck in the back. She noticed a man in a business suit with a painted wood carton full of apples and a sign that read Five Cents/ea. Ali frowned. He was too nicely dressed to sell apples on a street corner. No overalls, no straw hat. But it seemed like these days people would do anything for a job. Former bankers now peddled fruit on the street. Actors now janitors.

Sectioned off in the back corner of the storage area, where Ali was now banished for her clumsiness, were two beds and a hotplate.

On the exact opposite side of the storage area were shelves of backstock filled with extra kayaks, rolled-up maps, shovels, picks, and other adventuring necessities. In between two shelves, sixteen-year-old Tommy Peck had strung up a hammock. She looked at her archery equipment on the other side of the room, then Tommy.

Do I have to go again? she asked Tommy.

Yeah, sorry, Tommy answered.

Tommy, Ali’s dad called. Come clean up this mess.

Yes, Mr. Isner. Tommy sprang from his hammock.

As he passed Ali he asked, "You knocked the picks