For young detective Aggie Morton and her friend Hector, a spa stay becomes a lot more thrilling when TWO dead bodies are found in this third book in the Aggie Morton, Mystery Queen series, inspired by the life of Agatha Christie as a child and her most popular creation, Hercule Poirot. For fans of Enola Holmes.Aspiring writer Aggie Morton is ready to enjoy an invigorating trip to a Yorkshire spa, where her widowed mother can take the waters and recover from a long mourning period. Having solved yet another murder — not to mention rescuing her best friend Hector from certain death — over Christmas, Aggie is looking forward to more splendid adventures with Hector, who has joined Aggie, her mother and Grannie Jane on this trip. There is even a potential new friend in George, a young patient at the spa. But rumors abound about the spa's recently deceased former patient, and then another body appears under mysterious circumstances. Has there been a murder — or even...

For young detective Aggie Morton and her friend Hector, an opportunity to dig up fossils becomes even more thrilling when a corpse washes ashore in this fourth book in the Aggie Morton, Mystery Queen series, inspired by the life of Agatha Christie as a child and her most popular creation, Hercule Poirot. For fans of Enola Holmes.After an invigorating but not exactly restful trip to a Yorkshire spa during which she survived a near brush with death and foiled a murderer, aspiring writer Aggie Morton and her friend Hector are thrilled to have the opportunity to stay at a camp by the sea and watch real paleontologists at work. The famed husband and wife team of the Blenningham-Crewes are about to become even more famous with the recovery of the fossilized bones of an ichthyosaur from the sea by Lyme Regis. This news has already caught the attention of an American millionaire, a British museum and a travelling circus owner, who each want the bones for their...

For young detective Aggie Morton and her friend Hector, Christmas becomes a lot more exciting when a dead body is found in this second book in the Aggie Morton, Mystery Queen series, inspired by the life of Agatha Christie as a child and her most popular creation, Hercule Poirot. For fans of The Wollstonecraft Detective Agency.Aspiring writer Aggie Morton is looking forward to Christmas. Having just solved a murder and survived her own brush with death in her small town of Torquay on the coast of England, Aggie can't wait to spend the holidays with her sister Marjorie, the new Lady Greyson of Owl Park, an enormous manor house in the country; Grannie Jane and her fellow sleuth and partner in crime, Hector Perot. Owl Park holds many delights including Aggie's almost cousin Lucy, exciting and glamorous visitors from Ceylon and disguises aplenty in the form of a group of travelling actors, not to mention a secret passageway AND an enormous, cursed...

A smart and charming middle-grade mystery series starring young detective Aggie Morton and her friend Hector, inspired by the imagined life of Agatha Christie as a child and her most popular creation, Hercule Poirot. For fans of Lemony Snicket and The Wollstonecraft Detective Agency.Aggie Morton lives in a small town on the coast of England in 1902. Adventurous and imaginative but deeply shy, Aggie hasn't got much to do since the death of her beloved father . . . until the fateful day when she crosses paths with twelve-year-old Belgian immigrant Hector Perot and discovers a dead body on the floor of the Mermaid Dance Room! As the number of suspects grows and the murder threatens to tear the town apart, Aggie and her new friend will need every tool at their disposal — including their insatiable curiosity, deductive skills and not a little help from their friends — to solve the case before Aggie's beloved dance instructor is charged with a crime...

In the late nineteenth century, in a dot of a town called Westley, lives the smallest girl in the world. Josephine stands only twenty-two inches high and her parents charge gawkers a penny a piece to see her -- until they realize that the headmistress of MacLaren Academy for Girls will pay even more.At the Academy Josephine is treated like a slave and is tormented by the fine young ladies who attend, until she takes five gold dollars and runs away. She finds a new life with R. J. Walters' Museum of Earthly Astonishments. Among the other human curiosities in the Coney Island freak show, Josephine finds the family she has never known...and dangers greater than any she'd ever dreamed.This riveting novel of adventure and injustice, new in paperback, has received many honors, including selection as a finalist for the Canadian Library book of the Year for Children Award, and as a shortlisted title for the Hackmatack Children's Choice Book Award and the Red Cedar Book...

The year is 1924, the heyday of the revived Spiritualist movement. Fourteen-year-old Annie and her mother are successful purveyors of psychic chicanery; they move from town to town, cashing in on the fad for clairvoyant guidance. When they arrive in Peach Hill, Annie is once again compelled into her part of the act: she has to pretend that she's the village idiot in order to more easily listen in on gossip that her mother can put to use as a fake seer. But something happens in Peach Hill. Annie's tired of missing school, drooling, and keeping her eyes crossed. This is not the way to attract the kind of male attention she wants. She decides to drop the guise, but no sooner than she does, her mother comes up with a new scam. Now she's a faith healer and Annie's troubles have just begun.This is Marthe Jocelyn at the height of her powers as a novelist. How it Happened in Peach Hill is by turns funny, suspenseful, and heartbreaking as it explores the world of...

A summer night. A Saturday. For Claire, this summer feels fantastic because she'll be zooming off to college in the fall. For her younger sister, Natalie, it's an okay time with her friends: summer jobs, then hanging out. Fun mostly, but nothing special. A summer night. An accident. Life changes in a heartbeat.In Would You, Marthe Jocelyn tells a haunting story of tragedy and loss, of how one day can shape the next and at the same time emphasize the magnitude of life.From the Hardcover edition.

Americans Jenny and her brother, Tom, are off to England: Tom to university, to dodge the Vietnam draft, Jenny to be the new girl at a boarding school, Illington Hall. This is Jenny's chance to finally stand out, so accidentally, on purpose, she tells a lie. But in the small world of Ill Hall, everyone has something to hide. Jenny pretends she has a boyfriend. Robbie and Luke both pretend they don't. Brenda won't tell what happened with the school doctor. Nico wants to hide his mother's memoir. Percy keeps his famous dad a secret. Oona lies to everyone. Penelope lies only to herself. Deftly told from multiple points of view in various narrative styles, including letters and movie screenplays, What We Hide is provocative, honest, often funny, and always intriguing.From the Hardcover edition.

Malou has just turned sixteen—hardly old enough to be out in the world on her own—and all she knows for sure is that she's of mixed race and that she was left at an orphanage as a newborn. When the orphanage burns to the ground, she finds out that she may have been born in a small town in Ontario's cottage country. Much to her surprise, Parry Sound turns out to have quite a few young brown faces, but Malou can't believe they might be related to her. After she finds work as a cleaner in the local hospital, an Aboriginal boy named Jimmy helps her find answers to her questions about her parents. The answers are as stunning—and life-changing—as anything Malou could have imagined back at the orphanage.

In all their permutations, these unforgettable stories explore one of the irresistible facets of human nature, the fact that everyone has a secret. Marthe Jocelyn has selected twelve stories by several of the best authors in North America to explore the nature and the power of secrets. Sometimes secrets can be downright funny -- how would you like to be the front person for your fake, clairvoyant mother? Secrets can also be scary -- if you are pretending that your father is dead so you don't have to introduce him to your teacher. And sometimes secrets can break your heart, and heal it -- when they have to do with the ties that bind generations together.Contributors include Susan Adach, Anne Carter, Gillian Chan, Nancy Hartry, Marthe Jocelyn, Julie Johnston, Dayal Kaur Khalsa, Loris Lesynski, Anne Gray Sarndal, Martha Slaughter, Teresa Toten, and Elizabeth Winthrop.From the Trade Paperback edition.

"First times" can be life-changing experiences. Marthe Jocelyn has selected fourteen unforgettable stories, written by several of the best authors in North America, which explore human nature and take the reader on a transforming journey. From innocent firsts, such as first blue jeans, first boyfriend, first job, first step into adulthood, to the more complex first disillusionment, first inappropriate love, first family breakup, first breach of trust, to the shocking first dead body and first night alone, the stories in First Times -- in all their diversity -- embrace and captivate with their power. Contributors include Martha Slaughter, Curtis Parkinson, Susan Juby, Alan Cumyn, Susan Adach, Ted Staunton, Richard Scrimger, Gillian Chan, Bill Habeeb, Nancy Hartry, Bill Richardson, Tim Wynne-Jones, Marthe Jocelyn, and Sarah Ellis.From the Trade Paperback edition.