What Do Skateboards, a Search for Treasure That Leads to Murder, and a Missing Fiancé Have in Common? It's a Mystery!

Need a few good titles to get you started on your summer reading? If it’s a mystery you want, there is no better place to start than with our skateboard riding sleuth, Sammy Keyes. After impulsively waving at a suspicious-looking man rifling through a hotel room, Sammy finds herself embroiled in a mystery aptly named Sammy Keyes and the Hotel Thief by Van Draanen. Being a high-tops wearing, wisecracking skateboarder who is constantly in trouble at school doesn’t exactly endear her to the local law enforcement. So Sammy and her friends set out on their own to catch a thief.

Vesper Holly doesn’t wear high-tops; it’s 1872, and they haven’t even been invented yet! But a lack of footwear can’t stop a girl who is familiar with a half a dozen languages and can swear fluently in all of them, from plunging head first into The Illyrian Adventure by Lloyd Alexander. Vesper is determined to take up her late father's search for treasure even if it means fighting off the rebels who want to take over the tiny Illyrian village. Vesper does her best to save the day, and despite her lack of tennis shoes, even manages a little romance.

Which is a more than we can say for poor Boston Jane  by Holmes, who heads out for adventure and LOSES her fiancé! Make no mistake. Jane is not a wisecracking sleuth. And she certainly would never say a curse word—even if she knew how to speak it in several different languages. Jane is a lady, schooled in the lessons of etiquette for young ladies by Miss Hepplewhites’ Young Ladies Academy.

Armed with several white handkerchiefs, and the proper etiquette of “tea pouring,” Jane heads off to the frontier to meet her fiancé, confident she is well prepared for whatever the future brings. Except her fiancé has gone missing. And there are fleas. And rats. And any opportunity to pour a proper tea is quickly overshadowed by thunderstorms, mudslides and tobacco-chewing backwoodsmen who she is expected to share a cabin with.

Good thing she brought the handkerchiefs! It is enough to send a girl straight back to Boston. Except there is the one small problem of her missing fiancé. And besides; she missed the boat!

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