Trace Bonham is living large as the teen driver for a pro Super Stock racing team. He's on billboards and on the road instead of stuck in school. And he's blowing away the competition wherever he races. But Trace is worried that those who think his crew is illegally "juicing" his engine may be right. It's up to him to discover what is going on--and what he's going to do about it. High-school senior Trace Bonham, last seen in Super Stock Rookie (2009), is a star driver on the Midwest super-stock circuit. While piling up victories, he is featured on billboards, and the corporate sponsor of his racing team is happy with his performance. Still, Trace suspects that his mechanic is illegally juicing his car. Eventually, Trace discovers the truth, and he quits the team with a faint hope that he can continue his racing career. This series deserves the checkered flag. It combines gritty, behind-the-scenes racing details with believable, sympathetic characters. Grades 8-11. --Todd Morning “Weaver extends his Motor Series with this full-throttle, stand-alone sequel.” ― Kirkus Review “This is a good choice for car-mad reluctant readers” ― School Library Journal Author of Red Earth, White Earth and A Gravestone Made of Wheat , Will Weaver grew up in northern Minnesota on a dairy farm. The sometimes harsh and beautiful landscape of farm and small town life figures strongly in his writing. Sweet Land , an independent feature film adaptation of his story “Gravestone Made of Wheat”, and starring Ned Beatty, premiered in October of 2006. Weaver is also known for his young adult fiction. His character Billy Baggs, a teenage farm boy baseball phenom, earned his way into the hearts of teen readers in the series Striking Out , Farm Team , and Hard Ball . Each novel has won numerous awards, including being named an ALA Best Book for Young Adults.  Memory Boy , a post-apocalyptic novel based on environmental collapse, is used across the curriculum in many junior and senior high schools. Claws , a novel set in northeastern Minnesota (Duluth and the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness) features outdoor survival with a strong family back story. Weaver’s Full Service won starred reviews ( Kirkus Reviews and The Horn Book ) for its focus on a young man struggling with matters of religious faith and doubt, all complicated by his first “real” summer job, at a gas station, where he “meets the public” in all its variety. Defect , a novel about a teenager born with a miraculous birth abnormality, highlights what one reviewer from The St. Paul Pioneer Press called “the humanity and decency that runs through all of Weaver’s work.”. As an author, Mr. Weaver is particularly concerned with youth literacy and keeping kids reading. His new MOTOR series addresses a group of underserved young adult readers: kids who love cars. His new novel Saturday Night Dirt and its sequel, Super Stock Rookie , focus on dirt track stock car racing. The series starts with a close focus on a small town speedway and the cast of colorful characters who come there to race on Saturday nights. One of the characters, sixteen-year-old Trace Bonham, is a natural driver with dreams of racing professionally. The MOTOR series follows Trace’s on his path toward getting a “ride” (a sponsored race car) and competing at the highest level he can. While these auto racing novels will certainly appeal to boys, Weaver’s novels always contain a diverse cast of characters. Auto racing is one of the few sports that gives no gender advantage, and the MOTOR series also includes a positive and realistic portrayal of young women involved in racing. Along with the MOTOR series of novels, Weaver has formed a stock car racing team with a teenaged driver. His black No. 16 Modified race car, co-sponsored by Farrar, Straus & Giroux publishers, is driven by Skyler Smith of Bemidji. Team Weaver races in the WISSOTA circuit in the upper Midwest. An avid outdoorsman, Will Weaver lives with his wife on the Mississippi River in northern Minnesota. Checkered Flag Cheater A Motor Novel By Will Weaver Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR) Copyright © 2010 Will Weaver All right reserved. ISBN: 9780374350628 Trace Bonham poked the Seek button. Radio stations were hard to find late at night in the eastern tip of Iowa—or maybe it was the car radio. This vehicle, bought for cash in Indiana, was an American tin can. The right front tire had a high-speed shimmy that vibrated his teeth, and the yellow headlight beams were like two flashlights with old batteries. However, all it had to do was get him home to Minnesota, then down to South Dakota to catch up with Team Blu. Driving this car at night was like driving his Team Blu Super Stock—keep the pedal down and hope that nothing happened just ahead . . .“Don’t be afraid of big dust or smoke in front of you,” Harlan said. Harlan was Team Blu’s crew chief. “In fact, it’s best to drive straight into it, because whatever happe