Joan Lowery Nixon

In 1856, having traveled with his young sister from New York to a foster home on a farm in Missouri, ten-year-old Danny plots to get his foster father to send for and marry his mother.

In 1860, when their widowed mother can no longer support them, six siblings are sent on the orphan train by the Children's Aid Society of New York City to live with farm families in Missouri.

In 1863, eleven-year-old Peg Kelly is drawn into the dangerous activities of a mysterious young woman who takes refuge with the Kelly family in Missouri after fleeing the attack on Lawrence, Kansas, by William Quantrill and his Confederate raiders.

While working on a genealogy project for his seventh grade history class, Andy Bonner becomes determined to solve the mystery surrounding a distant relative who was accused of stealing the family fortune.

Rebekah, a fifteen-year-old Jewish immigrant arriving in New York City in 1902, almost abandons her dream of getting an education when she is forced to work in a sweatshop.

In 1861, while living with his foster parents at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, twelve-year-old Mike Kelly and his best friend Todd Blakely join the Union army as drummer boys but their dreams of glory end when they experience the full horrors of war at the Battle of Wilson's Creek in Missouri.

Jenny and her mother hunt a killer while fearing for their own safety, after the reading of their millionaire cousin's will leads to the murder of another cousin.

Sixteen-year-old Mary Elizabeth's summer job at an expensive health club turns out to be more exciting than she bargained for when a series of mysterious events culminate in murder.

Arriving for a vacation on Holiday Island, penguins Gus and Gertie stumble into a hotel full of Bad Guys and have a beautiful, valuable deep-sea pearl stolen from them.

Following an act of vandalism against her father's girlfriend, a seventeen-year-old girl is paired by the court with an eccentric senior citizen whose hobby as a sleuth turns deadly. Abbie Thompson acts without thinking and is arrested for malicious mischief. She's assigned to a program that matches teens with the elderly, and Abbie gets Edna Merkel, a difficult woman who's a member of the town's crime-prevention group. Mrs. Merkel brags that she's...