"Feeling lonely and out of place after her family moves to a new town, eleven-year-old Fiona Crane ventures to the local library, where she finds a gripping mystery novel about a small town, family secrets, and a tragic disappearance. 

Eleven-year-old Pearl Moran cannot imagine life without the historic but under-utilized branch of the New York Public Library where she was born (in the Memorial Room) and where her single mother works as the circulation librarian; the other librarians, the neighborhood people, the raccoons, and most of the 41,000 plus books all form the structure and essence of her life--but when someone cuts off the head of the library's statue of Edna St. Vincent...

A lot of Abby's favorite books have gone missing at the local public library and she suspects a strange man that she has seen there but Jeremy, the bully in her class, and his four-year-old hyperactive brother Evan are complicating her investigation.

1919. Mama is ill. Father has taken a job abroad. Nanny Jane is too busy to pay any attention to Henrietta and the things she sees - or thinks she sees - in the shadows of their new home, Hope House. All alone, with only stories for company, Henry discovers that Hope House is full of strange secrets: a forgotten attic, ghostly figures, mysterious firelight that flickers in the trees beyond the garden. One night she ventures into the darkness of Nightingale...