The Secret of Zoom
by Lynne Jonell

Can two friends foil a dastardly plan and save orphans from a fate worse than death?

Christina lives in a big old house on the edge of a dark forest. Deep within the forest is the laboratory where her father works—and where her mother was blown to bits years ago. Christina has always envied the orphans who live down the road, so she’s thrilled to meet Taft and help him escape through a secret tunnel. But soon, she discovers there’s more to the orphanage, the lab, and the mystery of her mother’s accident than she ever suspected. Sinister things are in the works—and the secret of zoom is the most dangerous secret of all!

A Junior Library Guild Selection and a School Library Journal Best Book of the Year.

Spellbinder
by Helen Stringer

A girl who sees ghosts must fi nd out why all of them—including her dead parents—have suddenly disappeared.

Belladonna Johnson can see ghosts, but what twelve-year-old wants to be caught talking to someone invisible? It is convenient, though, after Belladonna’s parents are killed in a car accident. They can live with her the same as always. Nothing has changed . . . until everything changes. One night, they vanish into thin air—along with every other ghost in the world. With the help of her classmate Steve, a master of sneaking and spying, Belladonna sets out to learn what’s happened to the spirits and tries to navigate a whole
world her parents have kept hidden. If she can’t fi nd her way, she’ll lose them again—this time for good. In her sparkling debut novel, Helen Stringer spins a ghost story that’s spine-tingling, sensitive, and dead funny.


From Spellbinder:
“She’s home!”
Belladonna’s father poked his head out of the sitting room. And that was the problem
right there, really. Where most fathers would have poked their heads out of the sitting room door, Mr.Johnson poked his right through the middle of the wall. “Did you bring the paper?”
Belladonna looked at him reprovingly. He immediately vanished back into the sitting
room and reappeared in the doorway.
“Sorry,” he said. “I forgot. Did you bring the paper?”
“Honestly, Dad, anyone passing by could’ve seen you through the window!”
He took the paper and turned back into the sitting room with a shrug. “No one can see me. Only you.”

Belladonna followed him in, exasperated. “Gran can see you. Lots of people can see ghosts; you see them talking about it on the telly all the time.”
“Charlatans,” muttered her father, settling down an inch above his favorite chair.