Library Mysteries

Abilene Tucker feels abandoned. Her father has put her on a train, sending her off to live with an old friend for the summer while he works a railroad job. Armed only with a few possessions and her list of universals, Abilene jumps off the train in Manifest, Kansas, aiming to learn about the boy her father once was. Having heard stories about Manifest, Abilene is disappointed to find that it's just a dried-up, worn-out old town. But her disappointment quickly turns to excitement when she discovers a hidden cigar box full of mementos.

What sort of madman would unleash an army of stilt-walking, laser-beaming, thoroughly angry whales upon the world? Who cares! All that matters is that his dastardly plan be foiled. Lucky for Lily Gefelty, her two best friends are the intrepid stars of their own middle-grade series novels: Jasper Dash (better know as the Boy Technonaut) and Katie Mulligan (beloved by millions as the heroine of the Horror Hollow series). It's going to take all their smarts to stop this insane, inane plot from succeeding.

Hard-boiled crime writer Will Ford might be critically acclaimed, but he's every bit as drunken and disreputable as the ne'er-do-well private eye in his novels. So when Ford offers Raymond Ambler—crime-fiction curator at New York City's prestigious 42nd Street Library—a collection of his papers, Ambler wonders if the project will be more trouble than it's worth. Still, the disgraced author is an important talent, and Ambler's never been afraid of a fight. Ambler's ready for the controversy that greets news of the acquisition.

In The Secret of the Indian, Omri vowed to lock his magical cupboard forever. But now, in The Mystery of the Cupboard, he finds an old journal written by his great-great aunt that reveals that Omri is compelled to open the cupboard just once again.

When Adam Eddington, a gifted marine biology student, makes the acquaintance of blond and beautiful Kali Cutter at Kennedy International Airport on his way to Portugal to spend the summer working for the renowned scientist Dr. O'Keefe, he has no idea that this seemingly chance meeting will set into motion a chain of events he will be unable to stop.

These days, Wil obsessively gathers not-so-legal evidence on her mom’s disap­pearance while she and her checked-out dad try to make ends meet at their failing motel. They’re a hair’s breadth away from foreclosure, and the pow­erful Clarkes have their eye on the property. Elwood has been counting down the days until winter break. He hasn’t told anyone he won’t be coming back to school to finish out senior year—his pastor father is training him to lead their congregation, the Garden of Adam. But after one last night out with his friends, he comes face-to-face with a more chilling fate.

Retired private detective and current seventh grader Steve Brixton has a new career: taking out the garbage on Wednesdays for five bucks a week. But it’s hard to leave the old game behind, and on a train trip down the California coast, Steve finds himself pulled back into sleuthing. Soon he’s in over his head in four feet and eleven inches of mystery involving a fleet of priceless automobiles, a deadly assassin (or maybe just a faulty lock on a sauna door), and a secret train car filled with intrigue. Plus there’s a girl involved, which complicates everything.

After volunteering to wrap presents for charity, Mike and Kate get a special thank-you: a sleepover at the Baseball Hall of Fame! But when they’re sneaking around the museum late at night, their flashlight reveals that one of the famous baseball cards on display is a fake! Can they find the real card, catch the crook, and get the presents to the charity’s Christmas party on time? It’s up to Mike and Kate to turn this Christmas mess into a Christmas miracle!

Lola Nox is the daughter of a celebrated horror filmmaker—she thinks nothing can scare her. But when her father is brutally attacked in their New York apartment, she's quickly packed off to live with a grandmother she's never met in Harrow Lake, the eerie town where her father's most iconic horror movie was shot. The locals are weirdly obsessed with the film that put their town on the map—and there are strange disappearances, which the police seem determined to explain away. And there's someone—or something—stalking her every move.

It's been happening since Min was eight. Every two years, on her birthday, a strange man finds her and murders her in cold blood. But hours later, she wakes up in a clearing just outside her tiny Idaho hometown - alone, unhurt, and with all evidence of the horrifying crime erased.

Devon Marsh is haunted by secrets. Like the identity of the person who killed her twin sister, Emily, in a hit and run accident last Halloween, which Devon has vowed to uncover. Like the things Devon said to Emily just before she died.

When 12-year-old Lara Finkel starts her very own detective agency, FIASCCO (Finkel Investigation Agency Solving Consequential Crimes Only), she does not want her sister, Caroline, involved. She and Caroline don't have to do everything together! But Caroline won't give up, and when she brings Lara the firm's first mystery, Lara relents, and the mysteries start piling up. But Lara and Caroline’s truce doesn’t last for long. Caroline normally uses her tablet to talk, but now she's busily texting a new friend.

Paul Marconi has always thought that Bellwood was a strange town, but also a boring one. Not much for an eleven-year-old to do. Fires are burning nearby, Paul's parents are obsessed with winning a bratwurst contest, and his best friend, one of the founding members of their only-child detective club, the One and Onlys, is about to acquire a younger sister, sort of undoing their whole reason for existing. But then! Hundreds of rubber duckies have appeared on the lawn of poor Mr. Babbage without any explanation. Finally! There is something Paul and his friends can actually investigate.

In this new take on Agatha Christie’s classic murder mystery The Mysterious Affair at Styles, iconic detective Hercule Poirot is recast as a brilliant, brash teen girl named Holiday, and narrated by her childhood friend Linden, an athlete-scholar who fits right in at his elite prep school—all the while hiding some secrets of his own.

A note from bartender Brian McNulty, Raymond Ambler’s friend, confidant, and sometimes adviser, sets the librarian sleuth off on a murder investigation - one that he pursues reluctantly until a second murder upends the world as he knows it. The second victim is a lady friend of McNulty’s - and the prime suspect is McNulty himself.

Meet the Sinister-Winterbottoms: brave Theo, her timid twin, Alexander, and their older sister, Wil. They’re stuck for the summer with their Aunt Saffronia, who doesn’t know how often children need to eat and can’t use a smartphone, and whose feet never quite seem to touch the floor when she glides—er—walks. When Aunt Saffronia suggests a week pass to the Fathoms of Fun Waterpark, they hastily agree. But the park is even stranger than Aunt Saffronia. Something mysterious is happening at Fathoms of Fun, and it’s up to the twins to get to the bottom of it.

There's nothing eight-year-old twins Zach and Zoe Walker love more than playing sports and solving mysteries. And when those two worlds collide...well, it doesn't get any better than that. In the opening installments of the Zach and Zoe Mysteries, best-selling author Mike Lupica begins a series for a new and younger audience, introducing listeners to a sports-loving detective duo who can swing for the fences and catch the culprit in one fell swoop.

Are librarians meek and mild bookish types with orthopedic shoes and granny glasses? Or are they ruthless killers with voracious appetites for wine, women, and song? Can a young widow solve a murder with the help of a Chicago policeman and an affinity for Sherlock Holmes? The Murder in the Library reveals all. It is elementary, my dears.

Mike and Kate arrive in Colorado to a ballpark covered in snow! Luckily, the stadium has a heater that can melt the fluffy flakes in time for next day's game. But when the ballpark engineers get a mysterious note saying that someone may tamper with the scoreboard, the snow becomes the least of the cousins' problems. It's time for Mike and Kate to switch into sleuth mode and solve a mystery that will take them underground, a mile above sea level, and even face to face with a dinosaur!

When a murder desecrates the halls of New York City's iconic 42nd Street Library, Raymond Ambler, the library's curator of crime fiction, has a personal interest in solving the crime. But his quest to solve the murder is complicated by personal entanglements involving his friend - or, perhaps, more-than-friend - Adele Morgan. Not only does Adele's relationship with the staffer who was murdered get in the way of Ambler's investigation, but her growing interest in a darkly handsome Islamic scholar disturbs him.