Dead Kid Detective Agency

Thirteen-year-old October Schwartz is new in town; short on friends and the child of a clinically depressed science teacher, she spends her free time in the Sticksville Cemetery and it isn't long before she befriends the ghosts of five dead teenagers, each from a different era of the past. Using October's smarts and the ghosts' abilities to walk through walls and roam around undetected, they form the Dead Kid Detective Agency, a group committed to solving Sticksville's most mysterious mysteries. So when the high school's beloved French teacher dies in a suspicious car accident, it provides the agency with its first bona fide case, putting them in the midst of a murder plot thick with car chases, cafeteria fights, and sociopathic math teachers, and sending them on an adventure that might just uncover the truth about a bomb that exploded 40 years ago.

As the Dead Kid Detective Agency embarks on its second (mis)adventure, October Schwartz and her five deadest friends are back, turning over metaphoric rocks and finding the centipedes underneath. In this latest volume, set against a backdrop of yuletide pandemonium, they discover dark supernatural forces at work in Sticksville and sleuth their way through a mystery involving a blizzard of suffragettes, ice skating disasters, anti-Asian sentiment, and the Titanic. Although the holiday season has descended upon the town like an eggnog rainstorm, October has no time for candy canes or mistletoe. She's busy dealing with an oddly pleasant new history teacher, her two living friends' new roles as high school radio DJs, and mysteries to be solved before the year end. October and her ghost friends are hot on the trail of those responsible for Morna MacIsaac's death in 1914 - or as hot as one can be on a 100-year-old trail- when Yumi becomes the target of a sinister harassment campaign at school. Solving dual concurrent mysteries at once won't be easy, but the intrepid heroine in black eyeliner loves a challenge.

October Schwartz and her five deadest friends are back - this time solving an American Revolution-era crime while dealing with the shenanigans of a present-day ghost pirate When October Schwartz raises her five dead friends to investigate the cause of Cyril Cooper's drowning death way back in 1783, she expects a dull research-based journey into the lives of Canada's earliest British settlers, the United Empire Loyalists. You'd think our favorite teen detective would have the hang of this solving mysteries thing by now, but when a ghost pirate appears on the scene, October may be in over her head. The ghost pirate - or someone in a very convincing costume - is thieving key evidence at every turn, beating October to the goods time and again. Worst of all, Valentine's Day is looming, and October's ghost friends seem more concerned about secret admirers than secret conspiracies. As October digs deeper into the mystery - and a few graves - she starts to suspect the pirate may be someone very close to her, just as she uncovers facts regarding her long-missing mom and the meaning behind a cryptic message from a past case. The Dead Kid Detective Agency's third quest is a veritable bouquet of misadventures that weaves the American Revolution, a beyond-chaotic school dance, one historic sea vessel, and a boatload of supernatural shenanigans into one madcap and unforgettable adventure.

Is the fourth time a charm for October and her ghost detective friends? While investigating the cause of the long-dead Tabetha Scott's death way back in the 1860s, October and the Dead Kids discover that Sticksville, Ontario, served as an endpoint for the Underground Railroad, the secret network by which enslaved people escaped to free states and Canada. But October Schwartz finds herself with more detective work than she can handle after some new musically inclined chums are incriminated in a robbery at a school concert. Fraudulent occult psychics, funeral home ambushes, band wars, the spooky Sticksville fairgrounds, and a history of prejudice all converge in a climactic conclusion that hints a secret society might be behind all manner of catastrophes in October Schwartz's not-so-boring little town.