With insight and a light touch, best-selling, Newbery Honor-winning author Gary D. Schmidt tells two poignant, linked stories: that of a grieving girl and a boy trying to escape his violent past. Following the death of her closest friend in summer 1968, Meryl Lee Kowalski goes off to St. Elene's Preparatory Academy for Girls, where she struggles to navigate the venerable boarding school's traditions and a social structure heavily weighted toward students...

In 1989 someone is threatening to steal the crown jewels, so the Queen of England summons Mac B. to England to protect them--and when they are stolen from a locked dungeon cell, where Mac and Holcroft, one of the warders, are supposed to be guarding them, it is up to Mac to figure out how they were stolen, and whether the thief is the descendant of an Irish soldier-of-fortune who tried to steal them in 1671, or someone else entirely.

Thirteen-year-old Lemony Snicket begins his apprenticeship with S. Theodora Markson of the secretive V.F.D. in the tiny dot of a town called Stain'd By The Sea, where he helps investigate the theft of a statue.

"This is a story of stolen violins. It's got mummies, museums, sandwiches, hostages, and a dangerous showdown with the Russian Red Army Choir. Open this book to find out more about my adventures. But beware--this mission is top secret and very dangerous!" -- cover.

Griffin Bing is in big trouble when a Super Bowl ring disappears from his middle school's display case, replaced by Griffin's retainer, and the more he and his friends investigate, the worse his situation becomes.

Birdie Gaux's dog, Bowser, considers himself in charge of security at 19 Gentilly Lane, so when the house is broken into Bowser wants to find the man with the limeade aftershave (and the cat) responsible--but nobody seems to know what the culprits were looking for, or why a strange girl is asking questions about Birdie's father, a policeman who was killed in the line of duty years before Bowser was adopted.

Eleven-year-old Amelia thinks of herself as devoid of talent, but when the dragonfly staff goes missing seven days before the Dragonfly Day Festival, she takes it upon herself to catch the thief and save her town.

"Jalen DeLuca loves baseball. Unfortunately, he can't afford to stay on the travel team. So, Jalen decides to take matters into his own hands and he sneaks into the home of New York Yankees star second baseman, James Yager, and steals a couple of balls. If he can sell them, he'll be able to keep himself on the team. Jalen's scheme goes wrong when Yager catches him. But Jalen has a secret: his baseball genius. He can analyze and predict almost exactly...

Sixth-grader Alton Ziegler loves maps, and when his portfolio of secret maps is stolen, he begins getting notes with orders that he must obey to get the maps back but, with the help of a popular classmate, he just might succeed before his teacher, principal, or someone else learns he has been studying and mapping things about them.

When a thief breaks into the P.E. lockers, leaving behind cryptic ransom notes, Drew Leclair, who is determined to stay out of trouble, investigates while dealing with her friends' obsession with the upcoming Wonderland dance.