Mystery

Mr. Samuel's Penny
It's 1972 and fourteen-year-old New Yorker Lizbeth Landers is sent to the sleepy town of Ahoskie, North Carolina to spend the summer with relatives. Her expectation of boredom is quickly dispelled when police sirens and flashing lights draw her to a horrible scene at the Danbury Bridge. Mr. Samuel, owner of Samuel's Lumber Yard, has driven his car off the bridge and into the river, drowning himself and his daughter. Curiously, Mr. Samuel died clutching a unique 1909 wheat penny - a penny that is then stolen from the Sheriff's office. Lizbeth witnesses Miss Violet's grief upon learning that her husband and child are dead, and decides she will help by finding the penny. Her search involves Lizbeth in the lives of many Ahoskie residents, including mean old Mr. Jake, Ms. Melanie Neely, otherwise known as "Ms. McMeanie," and Mr. Samuel's handsome brother Ben, who struggles to keep the business afloat after his brother's death. Lizbeth searches through the collection plates at church and in the coin jars of crazy Aunt Ode, a strange old woman missing one eye and most of her teeth, who keeps a flask in her apron pocket and a secret in her soul.
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Calendar Mysteries #10: October Ogre
John Steven Gurney, Ron Roy
It's a mystery every month from popular A to Z Mysteries author Ron Roy! With the younger siblings of the A to Z Mysteries kids!October is for Ogre...In the tenth book of the Calendar Mysteries- an early chapter book mystery series -there's a haunted house in Green Lawn! It's Halloween, and the Shangri-la Hotel has been transformed into a haunted house, complete with an ogre out front. Bradley, Brian, Nate, and Lucy are ready for some scary fun, but then they notice that none of the kids who have gone in the hotel have come back out. What's happening to them? Ghosts and witches and ogres aren't real . . . right?
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The Phony Farkleberry (Twisted Oak Amateur Detectives #1)
When a painting by legendary artist Thomas Farkleberry is stolen from the art gallery where Tyler’s mother works, Tyler’s mind races to the whispered conversation he overheard on the night of the big gala. But when his mother dismisses Tyler’s suspicions, he and his friends, Melanie, Amanda, Tubby, and Dontrelle, decide to take the investigation into their own hands. Can they crack the case before their parents discover what they are up to?
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Fearless Joe Dearborne
Some might say he’s courageous, while others would say he’s daring, maybe even a little crazy. But when Joe Dearborne risked his life and ran into a burning building to save a puppy, the local newspaper referred to him as “fearless”—and that’s a pretty big title for a sixth-grader to live up to. Plus, Joe already has plenty else to worry about. After other daring feats in the past, Joe promised his father he wouldn’t do anything dangerous again, and, alas, he’s just broken that promise. But whatever trouble he expects to get into with his father, and despite the dangers he’s triumphed over in the past, nothing could prepare Joe for what he’s about to encounter when a cold, bitterness creeps into his home. A mysterious and peculiar woman named Mrs. Chill has just been hired to care for Joe while his father is away on business. In no time, however, Joe discovers that she’s up to more than cooking and cleaning, and she has plans to destroy his family. Joe’s effort to save them results in perilous, sometimes humorous, encounters, and leads him on a journey through the threatening wilderness where he faces his greatest challenge yet.
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A Bowl Full of Nails
Finalist, Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged FictionBronze Medal, Independent Publishers Book AwardsFinalist, Foreword Reviews IndieFab Book of the Year AwardsBERKELEY, CALIFORNIA, May 15, 1969 -- Fiery young Gus Bessemer vows to stop the war in Vietnam. His weapon of choice? Guerrilla street theater. But when a Berkeley riot squad escalates from teargas to shotguns, Gus' defiant art attack screeches to a halt. Injured, outraged, and on the lam -- Gus splits for the Colorado Rockies to work with his hands and get his head together. Ironically, Gus' quest for inner peace brings him face-to-face with a Rocky Mountain counterculture full of colorful communards, FBI snitches, stolen dynamite, and a dead body in the National Forest. A Bowl Full of Nails offers the reader a suspense-filled tale bursting with humor, espionage, and rebellion while the author explores Gus' dance between personal demons and political resistance. [SCROLL DOWN to read Editorial Reviews for A Bowl Full of Nails.]
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The Hotel Monte Sano
It’s hot and steamy in the summertime in Alabama, even on top of a mountain, at an exclusive resort hotel for the rich and famous. Fifteen year-old Sophie Franklin doesn’t know what to expect when she arrives there with her family, from New York, in the summer of 1892. But what she finds, beside the opulent Hotel Monte Sano, are a handsome stable boy named Jude who just may turn out to be the first true love of her life and his African American friend Smokey who knows more about what goes on at the hotel than anyone else. And a butchered man, bleeding to death under the hotel’s boardwalk! Shocked and afraid, Sophie’s mother wants to pack the family back to New York. So Sophie can stay, she and Jude and Smokey set out to find the murderer. But what they find is a Gothic maze of Jim Crow bigots, Yankee carpetbaggers, pistol-packing gamblers, menacing ghosts, and revenge seekers determined to settle a Civil War grudge not so long since passed. The Hotel Monte Sano is a fast paced mystery set in a fascinating fin de siècle world of ambition and decadence—when love, at least for the moment, eclipses the mounting tensions between rich and poor, black and white, and North and South.
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The Majestic War And The Gods Of Olympus: The Forbidden Box
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Sammy Keyes and the Kiss Goodbye
Wendelin Van Draanen
The final mystery starring Sammy Keyes: “the most winning junior detective ever in teen lit. (Take that, Nancy Drew!)” —Midwest Children’s Book Review Sammy doesn’t go looking for trouble, but she seems to find it everywhere. She’s forever sniffing out clues and chasing down bad guys—and driving her friends a little nuts. She’s gone up against thieves and counterfeiters and gangsters and blackmailers and murderers, and always stayed one step ahead. Until now. Last night, one of the bad guys caught up. Last night, someone followed Sammy up the fire escape and pushed her from the third story. Now she’s in the hospital, out cold. And her friends are left with the questions Sammy’s always been so good at answering: Why? How? But most of all . . . WHO? In this emotional conclusion to her beloved long-running series, Wendelin Van Draanen shows just how many lives one nosy girl can touch and pays tribute to a life well sleuthed. Praise for Sammy Keyes: “If Kinsey Millhone ever hires a junior partner, Sammy Keyes will be the first candidate on the list. She’s feisty, fearless, and funny. A top-notch investigator!” —Sue Grafton “Sammy’s brave, resourceful, observant and a loyal friend, but this girl sleuth is no well-mannered Nancy Drew. She’s endearingly hot-tempered, nosy, and not always obedient—in short, she’s someone I want to read about again.” —Margaret Maron
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Jesus Jackson
Jonathan Stiles is a 14-year-old atheist who is coping with his first day of ninth grade at the fervently religious St. Soren's Academy when his idolized older brother Ryan is found dead. As his world crumbles, Jonathan meets an eccentric stranger who bears an uncanny resemblance to Jesus Christ (except for his white linen leisure suit and sparkling gold chains). Jesus Jackson, as he calls himself, offers to provide faith to Jonathan. He also suggests that Ryan's death may not have been an accident after all. With the help of his new friend, Henry, and Ryan's grieving girlfriend, Tristan, Johnathan sets out to discover the truth about Ryan's death - and about God, high school, and the meaning of life, while he's at it. But he's distracted by Cassie - number one suspect Alistair's younger sister - who holds the keys to the answers Jonathan is searching for, but who also makes him wonder if he should be searching for them at all.
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Made For You
Melissa Marr
Eva Tilling wakes up in the hospital to discover she possesses a strange new skill—the ability to foresee people's deaths when they touch her. While she is recovering from her hit-and-run accident, Nate, an old flame, reappears, and the two must traverse their rocky past as they figure out how to use Eva's power to keep their friends—and each other—from falling into the hands of a killer.This contemporary romantic suspense novel from five-time New York Times bestselling author Melissa Marr earned widespread critical acclaim, with Kirkus Reviews calling it a "riveting whodunit that delivers a bouquet of teen romance, paranormal, and thriller." And BCCB declared, "Between the suspense, the horror, the romance, and the wit, this will have equal appeal for fans of Sarah Dessen and Rosemary Clement-Moore."A stark departure from her fantasy settings, this Southern Gothic, racy thriller gives fans old and new chilling twists, unrequited obsession, and high-stakes romance.