Betsy Byars

When you're a pinball, life is a risky game, especially for three adolescent children placed in a foster home....

All summer Sara Godfrey has fretted over herself, her impossible body, her terrible new haircut. One moment she's elated, the next, she's in tears....

When Junior brings home the classroom hamster, Scooty, he decides to build the best hamster tunnel ever. But when Scooty goes missing, all evidence points to Mud. In the meantime, Mad Mary is missing, too - although Maggie and Ralphie find her bag and cane near the highway....

Mystery is in Herculeah Jones’ blood. How could it not be, with a father on the police force and a mother who’s a private eye? So when Herculeah notices a man hanging around the "Dead Oaks" mansion, she can’t resist doing some investigating of her own....

Amen "Amie" McBee, the youngest of five sisters, gobbles up words the way other children gobble up sweets....

When Junior Blossom wakes up in the hospital, his last memory is of crouching on the barn roof with cloth wings tied to his arms....

Together with her best friend and reluctant sidekick, Meat, Herculeah Jones meets a famous mystery author, Mathias King, aka the Murder King. King's novels mirror gruesome real-life murders, particularly A Slash of Life, which is about an unsolved local stabbing....

When Herculeah discovers a mysterious letter inside the lining of a secondhand coat, she suspects it's a desperate cry for help. If so, what happened to the person who wrote it? Herculeah thinks she knows the answer. What she doesn't know is that someone is watching her....

A dangerous coyote is surely no match for Junior Blossom. He sets out to build the best trap ever and win the big reward! However, Junior’s inventions aren’t exactly known for their success. A malfunction sets off a series of events that leaves Junior trapped far from home....

For the Blossom family it's the best day of their lives - and the worst. Maggie, out west with her mother, is about to become the newest Blossom on the rodeo circuit. And now that the rain has finally stopped, Junior can at last visit his friend Mad Mary in her cave in the woods....

Junior Blossom has created the most spectacular invention of all time: a homemade UFO. The Green Phantom took all of the garbage bags and Day-Glo paint Junior could find....

When Herculeah Jones's best friend, Meat, decides to take a comedy class, he just expects to get a few laughs. But then he discovers a dead body in the bathroom and realizes that there's nothing funny about murder. Things can't get any worse - until the body disappears....

Madame Rosa, the eccentric local fortune teller, has been murdered, and the only witness is her parrot, Tarot. But he’s not talking. Herculeah Jones thinks she knows who the killer is, but she’s not the only one....

Herculeah Jones finds herself in the middle of another mystery when her best friend Meat barely escapes a hitman’s bullet. Someone must have mistaken Meat for someone else. But who? Find out....

All her life, Boo has wanted a real live dinosaur to follow her home - and today, one did. There is only one problem - no one else can see Boo's dinosaur....

At the eerie Hunt mansion, Herculeah Jones has been reading aloud to Lionus Hunt, a stroke victim who can only communicate by blinking his eyes (once for yes, twice for no). Mr. Hunt seems to be trying to tell Herculeah something, but his gruff nurse won't allow her to ask any questions....