A young girl's life changes forever when she investigates a mystery with the help of writers, artists, and musicians in 1920s HarlemBessie Coulter has no idea why her father spirits her and her brother, Eddie, away from their home in Burlington, North Carolina, in the middle of the night, leaving their sick mother behind. But from the moment she steps off the train at Grand Central Station, she's captivated by this teeming, colorful city that's both scary and exciting. Although Harlem is a thrilling place, Bessie misses her mother and can't get used to living with her two aunts. She's lonely and homesick, especially when her father begins going out with a beautiful, well-dressed woman. Desperate to find out what's going on, Bessie launches an investigation that takes Eddie and her into a world of artists, jazz musicians, and writers, in search of a strange place called the Dark Tower. With the help of their next-door neighbor Lillian Moore and a...

Cécile loses her aunt's precious cameo necklace as she leaves a circus performance on a New Orleans showboat. Her search to find out who may have taken it leads her back to the wharf, to the French Market and Congo Square, to a high-society tea, and even into the cypress swamps outside the city. It also opens her eyes to the worsening challenges for people of color in the 1850s.

Now in paperback, an enthralling account of a young boys struggle to help freedom triumph over fear in the 1940s American South. Its 1947, and twelve-year-old Clyde Thomason is proud to have an older brother who guards the Freedom Traina train that is traveling to all forty-eight states carrying the countrys most important documents, including the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. Clyde is chosen to say the Freedom Pledge at the trains stop in Atlanta, but his terrible stage fright forces him to refuse the honor. Instead, its the class bully, Phillip, who gets selected, and he begins to torment Clyde. When an African-American boy saves him from a beating, Clyde is shocked. Especially when he learns that William lives in the white part of town. How can this be? And why cant he bring himself to be friends with William? Clyde hasnt told his parents he wont perform the pledge, nor has he mentioned his confusing friendship with a boy of color....