Abrahams, Peter

Down the Rabbit Hole

Laura Geringer, 2005

384 pages

Ingrid, 13, an aspiring actress, gets involved in solving a murder in Echo Falls. She lands the lead role in Alice in Wonderland in the Prescott Players, the town theater group, which the victim was associated with. But Ingrid gets so involved in the solving of the murder that she falls into the rabbit hole of the mystery surrounding it and its victim, an eccentric woman.

 

Abrahams, Peter

Behind the Curtain

Laura Geringer, 2006

346 pages

Ingrid solves another mystery in Echo Falls, a small town in New England.  Something is wrong with her brother, Ty.  She thinks he might be involved with steroids in his attempt to live up to his father's football fame at the local high school.  Her father's job seems to be in jeopardy.

 

Allison, Jennifer

Gilda Joyce, Psychic Investigator

Sleuth Dutton, 2005

321 pages

6.5 MG

Gilda goes to San Francisco for the summer to visit distant cousins in an old mansion.  She and her cousin Juliet work on solving a mystery involving paranormal phonemenon surrounding the mysterious death of Juliet's aunt 10 years before in the tower of the mansion.

 

Balliett, Blue

Chasing Vermeer 

Scholastic, 2004 

272 pages 

Calder and Petra are sixth graders caught up in an art mystery, the theft of a famous Vermeer which was to have arrived in Chicago for an exhibit near their University Lab School.  They are very gifted students who must pay close attention to a series of fantastic clues and not so ordinary coincidences which involve parents, their teacher, and a neighbor.  Can they solve the crime which mystifies police and the media?

 

Balliett, Blue

The Wright 3

Scholastic, 2006

318 pages

5.7, MG

Petra and Calder are involved in another mystery in Hyde Park.  Robie House, Frank Lloyd Wright's famous signature house, is to be dismantled and sent to several different museums.  To keep this from happening, the two combine with Tommy, another friend, and become involved in a serious mystery which involves clues, death, and many twists and turns.

 

Broach, Elise

Shakespeare’s Secret

Henry Holt, 2005

248 pages

4.0 MG

Hero is having trouble adjusting to a new school because of her name and because she is not as outgoing as her older sister.  Then she becomes friends with Danny and an old lady who is a neighbor and the three become involved in a mystery concerning a necklace, a diamond, and Shakespeare. 

 

Cabot, Meg

Code Name Cassandra

Simon Pulse, 2004

264 pages

Jess Mastriani is a girl with a special talent.  Ever since she got hit by lightening in the first of this series (1-800-Where-R-You) she has been able to find lost people (especially children) by sleeping on the information and then awaking to psychic information of their whereabouts.  She doesn't want the FBI involved, but they are following her, hoping to use her for their own purposes.  Now she is at a summer camp and two children have disappeared.  She just can't let it go.  Because of the slang and boyfriend situations, this book is definitely for 8th graders.  It is a mystery which will be very appealing to 8th grade girls. 

 

Colfer, Eoin

Half-Moon Investigations

Mirimax, 207

304 pages

4.2, MG

Twelve year old Fletcher Moon is a detective, solving little crimes around his school.  He even has a badge.  But this time he gets into a situation which lands him in the hospital and then makes him a fugitive from the police.  He even begins hanging out with the notorious Sharkey family, and everyone knows they are the bad guys, or are they? 

 

Gaiman, Neil

Coraline

HarperCollins, 2002

176 pages

Coraline and her parents move into an old house. Whe she asks her mom what is behind a locked door, her mother says that it leads nowhere and shows her that it is simply bricked up. When Coraline goes back later and unlocks the door herself, the bricks are gone and the dor leads into another world that mirrors the one she lives in.

 

Hahn, Mary Downing

The Old Willis Place

Clarion, 2004

208 pages

Tired of rules that have bound them ever since "the bad thing happened," twelve year old Diana ignores her brother's warnings and befriends the daughter of the new caretaker, releasing a ghost. 

 

Kehret, Peg

The Ghost's Grave

Dutton, 2005

210 pages

5.0 MG

Twelve year old Josh can't play baseball as he's planned with his new friends in Minneapolis because his mom and stepfather are shipping him off to a little town near Seattle to spend the summer with his Great Great Aunt Ethel while they go to India on business.  Only Josh thinks it won't be so great spending the summer with an elderly woman in the middle of nowhere.  He soon finds out that the village is able to extend all of the excitement and action he can bear, including a ghost, a graveyard with a secret, a criminal who is after something he has, and his aunt, who is anything but boring.

Tired of rules that have bound them ever since "the bad thing happened," twelve year old Diana ignores her brother's warnings and befriends the daughter of the new caretaker, releasing a ghost. 

 

Naylor, Phillis Reynolds

Jade Green: A Ghost Story

Naylor, Phillis Reynolds

Atheneum, 2000

176 pages

While living with her uncle in a haunted house, recently orphaned Judith wonders if her one small sin causes mysterious happenings

 

Nixon, Joan Lowery

The Trap

Nixon, Joan Lowery

Delacorte, 2002

176 pages

Sixteen-year-old Julie agrees to spend the summer at her great-aunt and uncle's ranch in Texas, but gets more than she bargained for when valuables suddenly start disappearing and it appears that there may be a murderer in their midst. (Card Catalog Description)

 

Patneaude, David

Haunting at Home Plate

Albert Whitman, 2003

192 pages

After they hear stories about their baseball field being haunted by the ghost of a boy who died there many years ago, 12 year old Nelson and his teammates start finding mysterious messages in the dirt.

 

Patneaude, David

Someone Was Watching

Albert Whitman, 1993

220 pages

4.5, UG

Chris does not believe his 3 year old sister drowned as everyone else does. When the psychiatrist tells him to watch the videotape he made of that day to confront his fears, he sees things on it which make him believe she was abducted. He goes in search of her as his parents are still mourning her.

 

Roberts, Willo Davis

Hostage

Atheneum, 2000

144 pages

5.4, UG

Kaci comes home from school to get medicine and is kidnapped by robbers. Lucky for her, the snoopy old lady next door drops by to see what's going on and gets taken hostage too. Between the two of them, they are able to figure out more ways to get out of the predicament they are in.

 

Springer, Nancy

The Case of the Left-Handed Lady

Philomel, 2006

192 pages Enola Holmes is hiding from the world’s most famous detective—her own brother, Sherlock Holmes. But when she discovers a hidden cache of bold, brilliant charcoal drawings, she can’t help but venture out to find who drew them: young Lady Cecily, who has disappeared from her bedroom without a trace. Braving midnight streets where murderers roam, Enola must unravel the clues—a leaning ladder, a shifty-eyed sales clerk, political pamphlets—but in order to save Lady Cecily from a powerful villain, Enola risks revealing more than she should . . . (Amazon Book Description) 

 

Springer, Nancy

The Case of the Missing Marquess

Philomel, 2006

208 pages

When Enola Holmes, the much younger sister of detective Sherlock Holmes, discovers her mother has disappeared—on her 14th birthday nonetheless—she knows she alone can find her. Disguising herself as a grieving widow, Enola sets out to the heart of London to uncover her mother’s whereabouts—but not even the last name Holmes can prepare her for what awaits. Suddenly involved in the kidnapping of the young Marquess of Basilwether, Enola must escape murderous villains, free the spoiled Marquess, and perhaps hardest of all, elude her shrewd older brother—all while collecting clues to her mother’s disappearance! (Amazon Book Description)  

After they hear stories about their baseball field being haunted by the ghost of a boy who died there many years ago, 12 year old Nelson and his teammates start finding mysterious messages in the dirt.

 

VanDraanen, Wendelin

Sammy Keyes and the Dead Giveaway

Knopf, 2005

288 pages

Sammy, a young female sleuth, is at it again, this time over the issue of eminent domain.  Her concern is for an old senior citizen who is living in a neighborhood ripe for urban renewal and the councilman who is working both sides of the issue.  It is up to Sammy to figure out what is going on and save the day. 

 

VanDraanen, Wendelin

Sammy Keyes and the Wild Things

Knopf, 2006

304 pages

This is not the summer camping trip of Sammy's dreams. She imagined shady glades, meandering streams, a deer or two. What she gets are scrubby shrubs, blazing sun, rattlesnakes, ticks, and scorpions. Her fellow campers are desperate to catch a rare glimpse of an endangered condor. To Sammy, the trip is nothing more than the painful in pursuit of the unspeakably ugly.  But when she and two other girls find an injured condor, Sammy's intrigued at last. As they track down a clue, they stumble onto two classmates and wind up lost. Which leaves three girls and two boys in a canyon with one tent and six billion biting flies. Oh—and an armed and dangerous highstakes poacher. (Amazon Book Description)

 

Zevin, Gabrielle

Elsewhere

Farrar, 2005 

288 pages 

Sixteen year old Liz Hall doesn't understand why she is suddenly on a ship going up a river with people she doesn't know.  As she begins talking with them, she realizes that they are all dead, that she is dead too, and that the ship is taking all of these souls to "Elsewhere," a place people go after death to await their rebirth.