Who Wrote This?
"Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them." [Tell Me!]
For Young Readers
Bones and the Dinosaur Mystery
Series Title: Bones
by Adler, David A.
Young Detective Jeffrey Bones investigates the disappearance of the plastic dinosaur his grandfather just bought for him in a museum gift shop.
Detective Dinosaur: Lost and Found
by Skofield, James
After Detective Dinosaur and Officer Pterodactyl find a missing baby wearing pink diapers and a home for Cadet Kitty, they lose and rediscover each other.
Evil Under the Sea: a Miss Mallard Mystery
by Quackenbush, Robert M.
Jacques Canard, noted undersea explorer, asks Miss Mallard to help discover who is destroying the coral in Australia's Great Barrier Reef.
Meg Mackintosh and the Mystery in the Locked Library
Series Title: Solve-it-yourself mystery
by Landon, Lucinda
Meg investigates the theft of a rare book from a locked library. The reader is challenged to solve the mystery before Meg, using clues in both text and illustrations.
Miss Nelson is Missing!
by Allard, Harry
The kids in Room 207 take advantage of their teacher's good nature until she disappears and they are faced with a vile substitute.
Mystery at the Club Sandwich
by Cushman, Doug
When Lola, famous singer at the Club Sandwich, loses her lucky marbles, elephant detective Nick Trunk, lover of peanut butter, takes the case.
Something Queer at the Haunted School
by Levy, Elizabeth
Two amateur detectives investigate a haunting of their school that starts around Halloween.
The Case of the Missing Monkey
Series Title: High-Rise Private Eyes
by Rylant, Cynthia
While having breakfast at their favorite diner, two detectives, Bunny and Jack, solve a mystery that is not what it seems.
Young Cam Jansen and the Baseball Mystery
Series Title: Young Cam Jansen
by Adler, David A.
When a baseball game is stopped because of a lost ball, Cam uses her photographic memory to find the ball.
For Middle Readers
Bunnicula : a rabbit tale of mystery
Series Title: Bunnicula
by Howe, Deborah
Though scoffed at by Harold the dog, Chester the cat tries to warn his human family that their foundling baby bunny must be a vampire.
Series Title: Herculeah Jones mystery
by Byars, Betsy
Herculeah stumbles onto the trail of her friend Meat's long-lost father while she and Meat are investigating the disappearance of a dead body from the men's room of a comedy club.
Encyclopedia Brown and the case of the disgusting sneakers
Series Title: Encyclopedia Brown
by Sobol, Donald
America's Sherlock Holmes in sneakers continues his war on crime in ten more cases, the solutions to which are found in the back of the book.
I put a spell on you: from the files of Chrissie Woodward, spelling bee detective
by Selzer, Adam
When Gordon Liddy Community School's resident tattletale-detective, Chrissie Woodward, realizes that the adults are out to fix the big spelling bee, she transfers her loyalty to her fellow students and starts collecting evidence. Told through in-class letters, administrative memos, file notes from Chrissie's investigation, and testimony from spelling bee contestants.
Sebastian (Super Sleuth) and the time capsule caper
Series Title: Sebastian Super Sleuth
by Christian, Mary Blount
Dog detective Sebastian investigates the disappearance of the contents from a rich family's sixty-year-old time capsule.
The Boxcar Children
Series Title: Boxcar Children Mysteries
by Warner, Gertrude Chandler
Introduces the orphaned Alden family children, who make an abandoned boxcar their home. They go on to solve many mysteries, with more than 100 books in this series.
The Egypt Game
by Snyder, Zilpha Keatley
A group of children, entranced with the study of Egypt, play their own Egypt game, are visited by a secret oracle, become involved in a murder, and befriend the Professor before they move on to new interests, such as Gypsies. A Newbery Honor Book, 1968.
The Eleventh Hour
by Base, Graeme
An elephant's eleventh birthday party is marked by eleven games preceding the banquet to be eaten at the eleventh hour; but when the time to eat arrives, the birthday feast has disappeared. The reader is invited to guess the thief.
The Mummy Case
Series Title: Hardy Boys Mysteries
by Dixon, Franklin
Called in to investigate the theft of some statuettes stolen from the Eygptian Museum in New York, the Hardy brothers become involved in a deepening mystery which includes the possible overthrow of another country's government.
by Abbott, Tony
While in St. Petersburg, Florida, to help clean out his recently-deceased grandmother's house, thirteen-year-old Jason finds an old postcard which leads him on an adventure that blends figures from an old, unfinished detective story with his family's past.
The puzzling world of Winston Breen: the secret in the box
by Berlin, Eric
Puzzle-crazy, twelve-year-old Winston and his ten-year-old sister Katie find themselves involved in a dangerous mystery involving a hidden ring. Puzzles for the reader to solve are included throughout the text.
For Older Readers
by Balliett, Blue
When seemingly unrelated and strange events start to happen and a precious Vermeer painting disappears, eleven-year-olds Petra and Calder combine their talents to solve an international art scandal.
Death in the Air
Series Title: Boy Sherlock Holmes
by Peacock, Shane
After losing his mother while solving a brutal murder, young Sherlock Holmes commits himself to fighting crime. While visiting his father at work, Sherlock watches a dangerous trapeze performance. When the troupe's star drops to his death, Sherlock notices something is amiss and realizes it was foul play.
Gilda Joyce, Psychic Investigator
by Allison, Jennifer
During the summer before ninth grade, intrepid Gilda Joyce invites herself to the San Francisco mansion of distant cousin Lester Splinter and his thirteen-year-old daughter, where she uses her purported psychic abilities and detective skills to solve the mystery of the mansion's boarded-up tower.
by Sachar, Louis
As further evidence of his family's bad fortune which they attribute to a curse on a distant relative, Stanley Yelnats is sent to a hellish correctional camp in the Texas desert where he finds his first real friend, a treasure, and a new sense of himself. Newbery Medal, 2000
I know what you did last summer
by Duncan, Lois
YOUNG ADULT FICTION
Four teenagers who have desperately tried to conceal their responsibility for a hit-and-run accident are pursued by a mystery figure seeking revenge.
by Broach, Elise
After Marvin, a beetle, makes a miniature drawing as an eleventh birthday gift for James, a human with whom he shares a house, the two new friends work together to help recover an Albrecht Du?rer drawing stolen from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The case of the left-handed lady: an Enola Holmes
by Springer, Nancy
Pursued by her much older brother, famed detective Sherlock Holmes, fourteen-year-old Enola, disguised and using false names, attempts to solve the kidnapping of a baronet's sixteen-year-old daughter in nineteenth-century London.
The Westing Game
by Raskin, Ellen
The mysterious death of an eccentric millionaire brings together an unlikely assortment of heirs who must uncover the circumstances of his death before they can claim their inheritance.
When eleven-year-old Toby goes to visit his grandmother, he not only learns to sail along the Connecticut coast, he embarks on a dangerous search for sunken treasure. Grades 4-6.