Get On the Case with 5 Brand New Middle Grade Mysteries

Remarkables, by Margaret Peterson Haddix
Marin’s life has been upended by a move to a new town, a new baby in the family, and a disastrous collapse of her old friendships back home. Her reality is shaken even she sees something extraordinary in the woods behind her new house. There’s a group of teenagers laughing and goofing around, there one minute and gone the next. Marin’s determined to find out what’s happening, and joins forces with another kid who can see the “Remarkables,” as he calls them. Charlie has his own reasons for wanting to know more about them—one of them might be his father. And if Charlie can fix what his father did years ago, he might be able to fix his family in the present. But the mystery of the Remarkables isn’t exactly what it seems and solving it leads to an outcome neither kid expected! It’s an intriguing time-travel mystery, and a great story of middle grade friendship and family.

Charlie Thorne and the Last Equation, by Stuart Gibbs
Charlie is a 12-year-old genius, a daredevil, and a bit of a slacker. But she’s just who the CIA needs. Einstein had one last equation for a discovery called “Pandora” which he deemed too dangerous to let out into the world and so hid. Now an organization of white supremacists is hot on Pandora’s trail. Charlie has no particular loyalty to the CIA, but it’s clear the bad guys must be stopped, and so she heads out with two CIA agents to Jerusalem to track it down. While cracking the clues Einstein left behind, she and the agents are in constant, nail-biting danger from both the white supremacists and Israel’s own agents, anxious to claim Pandora for themselves. Car-chases, shootouts, and desperate escapes don’t keep Charlie from cracking the code, but when she has the Pandora equation safe in her own head, what will she do with it?

The Great Shelby Holmes and the Haunted Hound, by Elizabeth Eulberg
John Watson has gotten used to being Shelby Holmes’ sidekick in mystery solving (she’s the genius of the team), and has gotten used to her difficult personality too (her social skills are a lot less developed then her powers of deduction). Their fame has spread, and when one of John’s classmates has a mystery in his apartment building, he begs Watson and Holmes to take up the case. Terrifying noises are keeping the residents awake every night, and John is pretty spooked by it himself! Could the previous owner and his faithful dog be haunting the place? But Shelby doesn’t believe in ghosts, and her formidable powers of deduction prove to be more than a match for the haunter. Solving the mystery alongside this great team is tremendous fun, and the pages turn quickly as the clues mount up!

The Minor Third (The Magic Misfits #3), by Neil Patrick Harris
The Magic Misfits are a group of kids who not only perform stupendous magic, but also solve mysteries. Theo loves amazing audiences with levitation tricks using his trusty violin bow, but his parents are pressuring him to use it to actually play the instrument instead of performing magic. Emily, a new girl in town, seems to understand the pressure he feels, but his friendship with her puts a strain on his ties to the Misfits. When a famous ventriloquist arrives in town, leaving little copies of his dummies all over town (which are not only creepy but bugged!), the Misfits realize they have another mystery on their hands. Is the ventriloquist tied to the villainous gang of the Emerald Ring, whose plans they’ve foiled in their past adventures? And can they pull together as a group to discover the answers they need…before it’s too late? Full of stage magic (including tricks for the reader to try), humor, and with a great cast of characters, this is just as delightful as the first two books!

The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Riddle of Ages, by Trenton Lee Stuart
The Mysterious Benedict Society is back, with a new mystery on their hands and new dangers to face from old enemies! The four kids of the society have settled into their new lives with Mr. Benedict, but the peace is shattered when the minions of their old nemesis escape from prison and force a telepathic victim of Mr. Curtain’s infernal mind-controlling machine to hone in on the location of the society. Constance, just as contrary as ever, must use her own telepathic gifts to keep them safe, while Reynie, Kate, and Sticky figure out a counter-attack that takes them back to the very last place they wanted to go—Nomansan Island, where they first took down Mr. Curtain. It’s great to see the kids now they’re older, but don’t worry that anything important is different—all of the fun of the first books is here, with plenty of new riddles, improbable plans, and lots of suspenseful danger!