Truly Lovejoy is “smack dab in the middle” of her family of five kids. At 5’11”, however, she towers over just about everyone both at home and in the seventh grade at her new school in her dad’s hometown of Pumpkin Falls, New Hampshire. The town is as quaint as its name — there’s even a winter cotillion for all seventh graders. They’ve moved because her dad, a military veteran, lost a hand in Afghanistan. While his physical recovery has been progressing, he’s having a harder time emotionally. With Truly’s Aunt True, he’s taking over his parents’ bookstore while Truly’s grandparents head off to the Peace Corps and her mom goes back to school. When Truly finds a twenty-year-old letter hinting at unresolved romance inside a signed first edition of Charlotte’s Web in the bookstore, she’s soon collaborating with the new friends she’s making in the hopes of figuring out who the recipient and sender are and tracking them down. Then the copy of Charlotte’s Web — valuable enough to get the bookstore out of debt — disappears, too. A true “cozy” for kids, this mystery has a few edges, but just the right amount of weight and authenticity to the family story and interactions to add emotional depth. Pumpkin Falls is refreshing and believably diverse, with its share of quirky yet credible small-town characters. (Ages 9–13)

An unsent letter in a first edition copy of Charlotte’s Web leads to a hunt for treasure in this heartwarming middle grade mystery from the author of The Mother-Daughter Book Club.

Now that Truly Lovejoy’s father has been injured by an IED in Afghanistan and is having trouble finding work back home, the family moves from Texas to tiny Pumpkin Falls, New Hampshire, to take over Lovejoy’s Books, a struggling bookstore that’s been in the family for one hundred years.

With two older brothers and two younger sisters clamoring for attention, her mother back in school, and everyone up to their eyebrows trying to keep Lovejoy’s Books afloat, Truly feels more overlooked than usual. So she pours herself into uncovering the mystery of an undelivered letter she finds stuck in a valuable autographed first edition of Charlotte’s Web, which subsequently goes missing from the bookshop. What’s inside the envelope leads Truly and her new Pumpkin Falls friends on a madcap treasure hunt around town, chasing clues that could spell danger.