Awards:

Edgar Allan Poe Award

Reviews:

"Listeners are immediately swept into the story when Sammy relates that she's observed a crime while looking at the Heavenly Hotel through her grandmother's binoculars...Young listeners are sure to embrace this solid entry in the Live Oak Mysteries series." - starred review, Publishers Weekly

Audio Recommended By:

AudioFile, Booklist, Publishers Weekly*, School

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Awards:

AudioFile Earphones Award

Reviews:

"The Sammy Keyes series keeps getting better and better. In the seventh title in the series, a frightened teen at a video arcade asks Samantha to hold a package for her. When the girl disappears, Sammy finds that she's now responsible for a baby!...Despite the light tone of Van Draanen's writing and Tara Sands' cheerfully cherubic performance, the book deals with hard issuees - gangs,

...

It's Christmas but leave it to Sammy Keyes to find trouble even in the midst of the holiday parade. Trying to help a friend, she reluctantly volunteers on the Canine Calendar float, only to have the famous cover dog dog-napped on her watch! The animal's owner orders Sammy to find the dog before the $50,000 ransom being demanded comes due. But all that Sammy can uncover is a little elflike girl named Elyssa, whose problems seem more important than...

Sammy and her friends are startled when they interrupt what seems to be an attempted murder on Halloween. While trick-or-treating at a spooky old, house, they find the door open, and inside a man is tied to a chair while a fire rages on the floor. A robbery? But what valuable could be missing from the home of a reclusive old man? Sammy tries to solve the mystery, all the while dealing with her nemesis Heather Acosta, fending off her Grandmother’s...

"Sammy Keyes has spent the last few years solving other people's mysteries; now her friends (and some foes) come together to unmask the fiend who has put Sammy in a coma"--

All of the beloved characters are back in the ninth mystery in this popular series. This time the 13-year-old sleuth is up against a cat burglar - literally! Cats are disappearing and Sammy is finding some of them in neighborhood garbage cans - dead! Miss Kitty, a local psycho cat lady, blames Sammy. Meanwhile, there's something fishy going on with one of the students from Slammin' Dave's Pro Wrestling School that just opened up next door to Sammy's...