History Mysteries

These excellent books for girls 8-13 each feature a resourceful and courageous heroine facing both everyday problems and issues related to the history of her time. I recommend these as a great way to introduce young readers to women's history. Hardcover or paperback.

History Mysteries™

1. The Smuggler's Treasure
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   Sarah Masters Buckey
   1812, Louisiana Coast: Elisabet Holder moves from Boston to live with her aunt and uncle after her father, a ship captain, is taken captive by the British. A mysterious stranger leads her to look for a treasure map.

2. Hoofbeats of Danger
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   Holly Hughes
   1860, Nebraska Territory: Annie Dawson, whose father is stationmaster at Red Buttes Pony Express Station, enlists Bill Cody and a friend who's half Shoshone to help her discover who is poisoning her pony.

3. The Night Flyers
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   Elizabeth McDavid Jones
   1918, North Carolina coast: Pam Lowder, whose father is a Doughboy in World War I, makes do on the home front, trains pigeons and encounters a German-accented stranger who may be a spy

4. Voices at Whisper Bend
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   Katherine Ayres
   1942, Pennsylvania: Charlotte helps with the war effort by collecting scrap metal, which disappears -- thus, the mystery. Her mother and father are working in the war effort and her brother's in the Navy.

5. Secrets on 26th Street
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   Elizabeth McDavid Jones
   1914, New York City: Susan's family, barely making ends meet at their tenement, takes in a mysterious boarder who's involved with the woman suffrage movement. Susan's mother disappears, and Susan must figure out where she is and how to get her back.

6. Mystery of the Dark Tower
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   Evelyn Coleman
   1928, Harlem: Bessie Coulter and her brother Ed are moved by their father from North Carolina without explanation, and Bessie sets herself to figuring out why.

7. Trouble at Fort Lapointe
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   Kathleen Ernst
   1732, Lake Superior trading post: Suzette, daughter of an Ojibwe mother and French father, investigates the disappearance of furs.

8. Under Copp's Hill
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   Katherine Ayres
   1908, Boston's North End: Innie (Innocenzia) Moretti, from an Italian immigrant family, takes on a mystery at Mrs. Helen Storrow's settlement house (with residents Miss Edith Guerrier and Miss Edith Brown), sees the Chelsea fire and makes friends with Matela, a Russian Jewish immigrant girl

9. Watcher in the Piney Woods
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   Elizabeth McDavid Jones
   1865, Virginia: Cassie Willis on the Civil War home front: she mourns her brother and worries about her father, Confederate soldiers, while fearing Yankees and Confederate deserters

10. Shadows in the Glasshouse
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    Megan McDonald
    1621, Jamestown: Merry is kidnapped in London and sent to America as an indentured servant, where she learns glassblowing. The mystery: an attempt to steal the formula for clear glass.

11. The Minstrel's Melody
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    Eleanora E. Tate
    1904, Calico Creek and St. Louis, Missouri. Orphelia Bruce plans to compete in the St. Louis World's Fair, joins a minstrel act, and solves a family mystery. Touches on racism including lynching.

12. Riddle of the Prairie Bride
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    Kathryn Reiss
    1878, Kansas: Ida Kate Deming suspects that the mail order bride who's arrived is not the same peson the family expected.

13. Enemy in the Fort
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    Sarah Masters Buckey
    1754: Rebecca Percy's family has been kidnapped by the Abenaki Indians, and Rebecca is sheltered at the fort, where she finds herself questioning her beliefs about settlers and Indians.

14. Circle of Fire
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    Evelyn Coleman
    1958, Middle Tennessee: Mendy Thompson, whose white friend is no longer allowed to associate with her, must save Eleanor Roosevelt from a Klan plot to bomb the Highlander School while the former First Lady is speaking there.

15. Mystery on Skull Island
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    Elizabeth McDavid Jones
    1724: Rachel Howell encounters pirates, a human skull and mysterious carvings and more on a mysterious island.

    History Mysteries - Boxed Sets

    • History Mysteries Books 1-3
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    • History Mysteries Books 4-6
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    • History Mysteries Books 7-9
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    • History Mysteries Books 10-12
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