Wendelin Van Draanen

When a school bus accident leaves sixteen-year-old Jessica an amputee, she returns to school with a prosthetic limb and her track team finds a wonderful way to help rekindle her dream of running again.

Lincoln Jones is always working on the latest story he's got going in his notebook. Those stories are his refuge, a place where the hero always prevails and the bad guy goes to jail. Real life is complicated: his mother works at a dementia facility after leaving an abusive boyfriend. Lincoln stays at the facility after school until his mother gets off work; he writes the patients into his fiction-- even the deaths he witnesses. Then Kandi Kain, a...

After a dog she is watching disappears from a city parade and the owner receives a ransom note, thirteen-year-old Sammy must use her detective skills to solve the mystery.

A Hollywood actress, who had been competing with Sammy's mother for an important role, is murdered, but thirteen-year-old Sammy and her friend Marissa are on the case.

All of the beloved characters are back in this ninth mystery starring Sammy Keyes. This time the 13-year-old sleuth is up against a cat burglar - literally! Cats are disappearing and Sammy is finding some of them in neighborhood garbage cans - dead! Just as Sammy discovers that her archenemy Heather is her "star" sister and shares her birthday, Sammy's mother arrives to inform her that she isn't really turning 14 - so it-'ís another year of unlucky

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Reviews:

"Tara Sands brings a lively voice and brisk pace to the story of a determined 13-year-old detective, her three girlfriends, and the slew of quirky characters who populate this mystery...Van Draanen has written a solid mystery with suspense, humor and heart; Tara Sands captures all three in an enjoyable dramatization." - AudioFile Magazine

Audio Recommended By:

AudioFile, Booklist, School Library Journal

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Streetwise stray dog Mr. Whiskers and sisters Misty and Zelda follow clues through the streets of San Francisco in their search for the sibling's kidnapped father.

On Halloween night, seventh grader Sammy stumbles onto a mystery involving a twenty-year-old family feud and some heirlooms stolen by a man in a skeleton costume.

When her behavior escalates out of control, fourteen-year-old Wren is taken away to a wilderness therapy camp where she is forced to develop new skills, including the courage to ask for help.

Awards:

Edgar Allan Poe Award

Reviews:

"Listeners are immediately swept into the story when Sammy relates that she's observed a crime while looking at the Heavenly Hotel through her grandmother's binoculars...Young listeners are sure to embrace this solid entry in the Live Oak Mysteries series." - starred review, Publishers Weekly

Audio Recommended By:

AudioFile, Booklist, Publishers Weekly*, School

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