Nobody's Secret by Michaela MacColl

Emily's life is full of limits. Limited by the social practices and expectations of women in the 1840s. Limited by her mother's health and her mother's worries about hers. Limited by the fact that everyone in her small village knows her family, the Dickersons. So when she is out in the fields, she meets a young man who refuses to tell her his name so she calls him Mr. Nobody. She sees him in town. The next time she sees him, he is dead in her family pond. Because she is not the only one who doesn't know his name, he is laid out in the church basement to see if anyone knows who he is. Emily makes it her quest to find out who killed him. As she tries to follow the clues, she has to keep all the adults in the dark about her doings, especially her mother. As the clues lead closer and closer to the killer, the danger grows. Whoever did it has killed once and will kill again to keep from getting caught. Will Emily really risk her life and maybe the lives of her family to just bring Mr. Nobody's killer to justice? If she does, will she finally learn his name? Maybe you should not wish that your life is too boring just like Emily did. You might not like the excitement that may come your way.

Etiquette & Espionage (Finishing School Book the First) by Gail Carriger

You think your parents don't understand you. Sophronia doesn't want to be like all the other young ladies in her world of 1851 England (if you watch Downton Abbey you may understand). When she finally gets her mother so angry, she is shipped off to a finishing school -Mademoiselle Geraldine's Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Qualities. That is the last place she wants to be, or so she thinks, but on her way she learns from her travel companions it is not your "normal" finishing school and she is what they call a covert recruit. As she is trying to find out what that is, the stagecoach is attacked by something you will not find in our history of England. This is only the start of surprises and quickly she learns that she may fit in more than she thought. If you think your teachers are weird, you have not met the faculty of this place. I would fit in easily. But there is a more pressing problem than learning how to curtsy and teatime manners while knowing how to hide the knife in your dress. Something has turned up missing and if the school doesn't hand it over, it might not be around much longer and its students may go with it. If you love a fast paced story full of the unexpected and humorous twists, this is for you. All I know is I want the pet dog she hides in her suite at school. I know I am a cat person, but I think that dog is the coolest dog in any book I have ever read. 

Horten's Miraculous Mechanisms: Magic, Mystery & avery Strange Adventures by Lissa Evans

Stuart Horten is not happy to move back to his father's home town. He had to leave his friends and a cool house to go to a small home with 3 noisy girls next door who like to write bad things about them in their "newspaper." But once he learns about the mysterious disappearance of his great uncle Tony, life gets more interesting. Turns out his dull father was left a clue to solve what really happened to Uncle Tony but didn't bother to do it. So Stuart sets off on the cold trail that leads to places where he will only get in trouble if he goes. On his quest, he doesn't know who he can trust, but he has to do something before they tear down Tony's abandoned house which might have the final clue to lead to the surprising ending. When he realizes that he is being followed, life gets more dangerous with every clue. If he does find the truth, will any of adults believe him? If you love a good mystery that is not easy to know where it is going, this book is for you.  

Frozen in Time by Ali Sparkes

Some boring summer!! Just when Ben and Rachel think the summer would be boring, they find a secret in the backyard. What they find sends all into an international mystery years in the making. How does a British government clean-up car, the Cold War,  Chernobyl, and a missing uncle help solve a 50 year old mystery? Can they really trust that helpful librarian? (Can you ever trust a helpful librarian??) The biggest question could be how do teens from the 1950s learn to be like teens today when everything you do was not allowed during that time? Will help arrive in time or will Ben and Rachel's new friends not make it to get to the bottom of what really happened to their father? For those of you who love a great mystery wrapped in one of the wildest sci-fi inventions, you will not want to put this down.

The Grimm Legacy by Polly Shulman

Elizabeth's life takes a turn for the better when she helps a homeless woman and her teacher takes notice. He helps her get a job at the most unusual library -New York Circulating Material Repository. (I think I might have gone to library school with a few of the librarians) There is where she starts to find some real friends and gets pulled into solving who is taking some of the most interesting items which are kept in the basement in Grimm Collection.  Who can be trusted and who can't? When Elizabeth leaves her sense of direction as collateral for one of the items from the Grimm Collection so she could borrow it and the item can't be returned as she got it, she has to find the answer to the mystery.   (After you read about a few items in the Grimm Collection, you may be tempted to leave your first born just to get your hands on them.)  Is that a real bird that keeps showing up or is it magic? Is it really a good idea to run out of a library when you are only 6 inches tall? Could some of the patrons be the key? How does her and others interesting magic sense help?  Is her stepmother somehow involved? Can a girl whose life is so similar to Cinderella's really save herself from ending up in a new Grimm Fairy Tale? Please let me know which special collection in the basement you would love to get into. I might get back to you about which one is my favorite.

Chelsey and the Green-Haired Kid by Carol Gorman

Chelsey may be wheelchair bound, but she has to solve who pushed the kid off the back of bleachers. The kid died right in front of her and either the green-haired kid is another witness or involved in the murder. If the murder killed once, she could be the next victim, especially if the killer wants no on left to identify him to the police. Why would anyone want to kill someone at a high school basketball game? Why does the green-haired kid wants nothing to do with solving this unless he might be involved? I read this almost 20 years ago and if a book sticks in your mind that long after reading so many more great books, you know it has to be good. Mystery lovers, see if you can solve this before the author does it for you.

Closed for the Season by Mary Downing Hahn

After about the 5th student told me this was the best book they ever read, I knew I needed to read it. Other books by this author are also popular and had to have multiple copies bought. Now I see why. How would you like to find out that you are not just the new kid in town, but you also live in a house of an unsolved murder. Logan just wants to fit in with the students at his new junior high when school starts, but events will probably stop that. His next door neighbor wants his help solving the murder and once they start, they have to see it through. Whoever killed Mrs. Donaldson has started to notice their search and now they may be the target. If you like plot twists, you will love this. For those of you who read the last few pages to see what happens, it won't work. The author has solved the it sooner and you will have to read it to find out who did murder that poor sweet little old lady. One of the characters will not be who you think that character is. It fit the plot but it was a shock. For those of you who are picked on by the popular kids, you will really love the ending.

The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart

Mysterious Mr. Benedict is looking for children, orphans in fact, to send undercover to the Learning Institute for the Very Enlightened, a school that the only rule is there is NO rules. Ads placed in papers for gifted students bring many, but only a few finally pass the tests he gave. It seems that the whole world is in the middle of terrible problems and upsets, and some how the institute is involved. If his spies fail, no one will miss them if they are orphans will they? You get to take the tests along with the characters. See if you can pass them. EML didn't and we all know how smart librarians are. Dangers are every where and the upsets are too close to what is happening in our world now. Maybe this is not that fictional? What if.....

The Night Room by E.M. Goldman

What high schooler wouldn't want to go forward in time to see what his/her 10 year reunion is like? Who makes good and who gets what is coming to them? But when someone is not at the reunion, could this computer simulation really be a cover for an upcoming murder? Can it be stopped or is the future set in stone? Almost every type of student at your school will have someone just like them in the night room - whether you are the jock, brain, popular, or out cast. Who has it in them to survive when survivial is all you can do.

Curses, INC. and Other Stories by Vivian Vande Velde

While some of the stories are better than others, those at are great make up for the rest. Stories range from a boy who tries a new website "Curses, INC." to get back at a girl but doesn't quite works out as he plans, to a man who learns what his cat and dog are really thinking (I learned to never turn my dead back to my cats), to letting the dead stay dead. If you don't like one, just go to the next.

A Drowned Maiden's Hair; a Meldodrama by Laura Amy Schlitz

I had to buy 2 extra copies of this book to meet the demand once the word got out about this book. By a Newbery Award winning author, it is a story of Maude Flynn, her need to find the love of a family, the spiritualists movement in the late 1800's and a mother's love of her dead child. What would you do to get someone to love you and what would you do for someone you love? Does the ghost really guide everyone to so called happy ending?

The Ghost Squad Flies the Concorde by E. W. Hildick

While this cover is different from the hardback books in most libraries, it does show the members of ghost squad, which unlike today's TV show are ghosts not ghost hunters. In this book, they have to work together to save Danny's living family from being killed. Using the computer that put Gomez on the ghost squad to communicate to the 2 living members, they must find a way to stop the man who will stop at nothing to get the money earned by Danny's death. But they must also watch out for the one thing that can kill a ghost while they are trying to put an end to this evil plot. While this series is over 20 years old, any publisher reading this blog should try to bring it back into print so my readers can enjoy the whole series.