Toby Gold and the Secret Fortune

An infant is discovered one night on a commuter train from New York City during a stop in the sleepy town of Wallingford, Connecticut. The local police are summoned, but are unable to locate the boy’s parents, despite painstakingly questioning each person on the train. For some strange reason, none of the passengers can remember seeing his mother falling from the train – after falling victim to an assassin’s bullet. Assigned the name “Toby Gold” by social services, the mysterious child grows up in Wallingford, moving from foster home to foster home, not knowing who his real parents are - or why he was born with such freakish skills with math and money. Now a teenager, Toby’s money skills are noticed by the wrong people, and thus he is unwittingly sucked into a high-stakes financial conspiracy that puts his life, and the lives of his two closest friends, in great peril. Ultimately, Toby solves the crime, saves his friends, and even saves his school using only his amazing money skills – and some chocolate pudding.

Toby Gold is a seventh grader in Wallingford, Connecticut who has always known that he is good with money – but has no idea how good until he discovers a dangerous hidden society of money and intrigue that co-exists with the everyday world we all know. Toby stumbles upon this dark financial world one day when he discovers secret messages encrypted into the stock ticker “crawl” that moves along the bottom of the screen on the financial news channel. Toby’s shock only grows worse when he realizes that the secret messages are directed to him! His unique abilities with math and money have been noticed by the wrong people, and Toby is quickly sucked into a high-stakes life or death investment conspiracy that he is only able to resolve by using his incredible financial talents. This action-packed urban fantasy introduces readers to many financial literacy concepts, including saving, investing, banking, entrepreneurship, time value of money and basic financial statements.

Craig Everett was born and raised in Maine, spending his childhood summers digging along the shores of Bar Harbor for buried pirate treasure – blissfully unaware that pirates seldom ventured that far north. He received his B.A. in Economics from Tufts University, an MBA from George Mason University, and a Ph.D. in Finance from Purdue University. He spent nearly twenty years in private industry, experiencing business, finance and entrepreneurship in the real world. Now a full-time teacher, he is passing along his business knowledge to the next generation. The author is currently a finance professor at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California, where he teaches corporate and entrepreneurial finance in the MBA program. He dedicates his free time as a volunteer in local schools teaching kids about money and finance. He lives just north of Los Angeles in Thousand Oaks with his wife and five children.