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Mystery Books for Middle Grade and YA Readers

Fascinating and sometimes troubling mysteries to challenge you on your next read. 

Middle Grade Titles

Cover of Chester Keene Cracks the C
Kekla
Magoon
2022

Eleven-year-old Chester and his classmate Skye, tasked with a complex puzzle-solving mission, discover the key to their spy assignment is to stop a heist, but cracking the code could mean finding out things are not always what they seem.

Cover of Drew LeClair Gets a Clue
Katryn
Bury

Twelve-year-old Drew uses her true crime expertise to catch the cyberbully in her school--only to discover that family, friendship, and identity are the hardest mysteries to solve.

Cover of Duet
Elise
Broach
Ziyue Chen

The life of a musically gifted bird changes forever after she discovers the music of Chopin and helps a talented young pianist solve the mystery of a long-lost Chopin piano.

Cover of Finding Mighty
Sheela
Chari
2019

Along the train lines north of New York City, 12-year-old neighbors Myla and Peter search for the link between Myla's necklace and the disappearance of Peter's brother, Randall. Thrown into a world of parkour, graffiti, and diamond smuggling, Myla and Peter encounter a band of thugs who are after the same thing as Randall.

Cover of Futureland: Battle for the
H.D.
Hunter
Khadijah Khatib
2022

Cam Walker, the 12-year-old son of the creators of a traveling theme park called Futureland, must stop an unknown enemy from stealing his parent's cutting-edge technology and using it for sinister purposes.

Cover of The Marvellers
Dhonielle
Clayton
Khadijah Khatib
2022

Eleven-year-old Ella Durand is the first Conjuror to attend the Arcanum Training Institute, a magic school in the clouds where Marvellers from around the world practice their cultural arts. When a dangerous criminal known as the Ace of Anarchy escapes prison tensions grow in the Marvellian world and Ella becomes the target of suspicion. Worse, her mentor, Masterji Thakur, mysteriously disappears while away on a research trip. Ella must find a way to clear her family's name and track down her mentor before it's too late.

Cover of Mysteries of Trash and Tre
Margaret Peterson
Haddix
2022

Colin and Nevaeh, whose parents own rival junk-removal businesses, uncover mysteries hidden in attics and basements and discover how trash can become treasure. 

Cover of Super Puzzletastic Mysteri
Chris Grabenstein and
various authors
2020

From tales of hapless superheroes and stolen squirrel monkeys to murderous triplets and haunted basements, these thrilling, puzzling, and hilarious cases have one thing in common--YOU get a chance to be the detective before the author reveals the solution.

Cover of Undercover Latina
Aya
de León
2022

Fourteen-year-old Andréa Hernández-Baldoquín hails from a family of spies working for the Factory, an international organization dedicated to protecting people of color. For her first solo mission, Andréa straightens her hair and goes undercover as Andrea Burke, a white girl, to befriend the estranged son of a dangerous white supremacist. Can Andréa keep her head, her geek cred, and her code-switching on track to trap a terrorist?

Cover of Wretched Waterpark
Kiersten
White
2022

Twins Theo and Alexander and their sister Wil are abruptly dropped off at their Aunt Saffronia's house, where they learn they must complete a series of tasks in order to see their parents again--and their first assignment is at a waterpark.

 

Middle Grade Series

Cover of Ali Cross
James
Patterson

Ali Cross has always looked up to his father, former detective and FBI agent Alex Cross. While solving some of the nation's most challenging crimes, his father always kept his head and did the right thing. Does Ali have what it takes to be a great detective?

Cover of Blackthorn Key
Kevin
Sands

Following a series of murders, Christopher Rowe, an apothecary's apprentice, must solve puzzles and decipher codes in pursuit of a secret that could destroy the world.

Cover of Charlie Thorne
Stuart
Gibbs

A thrilling series about an unbelievable twelve-year-old genius who uses her skills as an operative for the CIA.

Cover of Funjungle
Stuart
Gibbs

Teddy Fitzroy is FunJungle’s resident zoo sleuth. He solves mysteries and strives to protect the animals at the zoo. 

Cover of Spy School
Stuart
Gibbs

Twelve-year-old Ben Ripley leaves his public middle school to attend the CIA's highly secretive Espionage Academy, which everyone is told is an elite science school.

Cover of Kudo Kids
Maia Shibutani, Alex Shibutani and
Michelle Schuster
Yaoyao Ma Van As

The brother and sister duo, Andy and Mika, solve mysteries on their travels in this action-packed series.

Cover of Mighty Muskrats Mystery
Michael
Hutchinson

Sam, Otter, Atim, and Chickadee are four inseparable cousins growing up on the Windy Lake First Nation. Nicknamed the Mighty Muskrats for their habit of laughing, fighting, and exploring together, the cousins find that each new adventure adds to their reputation.

Cover of Myrtle Hardcastle Mystery
Elizabeth C.
Bunce

Myrtle Harcastle is a wickedly smart 12-year-old with a keen interest in the new tools of criminology and a nose for murder in the Victorian English village where her father is the local prosecutor.

Cover of The Mysterious Benedict So
Trenton Lee
Stewart

Dozens of children respond to a peculiar ad in the newspaper and are then put through a series of mind-bending tests, which readers take along with them. Only four children--two boys and two girls--succeed. Their challenge: to go on a secret mission that only the most intelligent and inventive children could complete. 

 

Middle Grade Graphic Novels

Cover of Shirley and Jamila series
Gillian
Goerz

When Shirley and Jamila meet, Jamila is simply hoping for a friend in her new neighborhood but Shirley is a detective and together they form a crime-solving partnership and also discover what it means to be a friend. 

Cover of Student Ambassador: The Mi
Ryan
Estrada
Axur Eneas
2020

A student ambassador is sent on a high-stakes diplomatic mission to a far-away land, where he and a newly crowned boy king are thrust into a globe-trotting action-adventure mystery.

Cover of Surfside Girls: The Myster
Kim
Dwinell
2019

When one of the ghosts from Danger Point gets spooked, it's time for Sam and Jade to bring out the Journal of Weird and leap into action! Trying to solve this two-hundred-year-old mystery takes the girls all over their town and beyond, all while Surfside's Annual Surf Competition is going on. 

Cover of Zatanna and the House of S
Matthew
Cody
Yoshi Yoshitani
2020

Welcome to the magical, mystical, topsy-turvy world of the House of Secrets, where Zatanna embarks on a journey of self-discovery and adventure with her pet rabbit, Pocus, at her side.

 

YA Titles

Cover of The Agathas
Kathleen Glasgow and
Liz Lawson
2022

Who killed Brooke Donovan? It's the biggest mystery of the summer, and everyone in Castle Cove thinks they know what happened. But they're wrong. Two unlikely friends come together to solve the case in this fast-paced, fun, modern Agatha Christie inspired thriller.

Cover of Belladonna
Adalyn
Grace
2022

Nineteen-year-old orphan Signa Farrow confronts Death--and her own deathly powers--when she investigates the mysterious murder of a relative at the Thorn Grove estate.

Cover of  Burn Down, Rise Up
Vincent
Tirado
2022

When an urban legend rumored to trap people inside subway tunnels seems to be behind mysterious disappearances in the Bronx, sixteen-year-old Raquel and her friends team up to save their city--and confront a dark episode in its history in the process.

Cover of Cold
Mariko
Tamaki
2022

Told in alternating perspectives, Todd replays the events that lead to his death in the local park, watching as detectives investigate his murder and talk to the students responsible for it, and meanwhile Georgia, who does not know Todd, cannot stop thinking about him.

Cover of Elatsoe
Darcie
Little Badger
Rovina Cai
2020

Elatsoe--Ellie for short--lives in an alternate contemporary America shaped by the ancestral magics and knowledge of its Indigenous and immigrant groups. She can raise the spirits of dead animals--most importantly, her ghost dog Kirby. When her beloved cousin dies, all signs point to a car crash, but his ghost tells her otherwise: He was murdered. Who killed him and how did he die? With the help of her family, her best friend Jay, and the memory great, great, great, great, great, great grandmother, Elatsoe must track down the killer and unravel the mystery of this creepy town and it's dark past. 

Cover of Firekeeper’s Daughter
Angeline
Boulley
2021

Eighteen-year-old Daunis Fontaine has never quite fit in, both in her hometown and on the nearby Ojibwe reservation. She dreams of a fresh start at college but then witnesses a shocking murder, thrusting her into an FBI investigation of a lethal new drug.

Cover of Hollow Fires
Samira
Ahmed
2022

After discovering the body of fourteen-year-old Jawad Ali in Jackson Park, seventeen-year-old journalism student Safiya Mirza begins investigating his murder and ends up confronting white supremacy in her own high school.

Cover of The Many Half-Lived Lives
Maya
MacGregor
2022

A nonbinary autistic teen realizes they must not only solve a 30-year-old mystery but also face the demons lurking in their past in order to live a satisfying life.

Cover of Nothing More to Tell
Karen M.
McManus
2022

Brynn Gallagher uses her internship at a new true crime show to investigate the unsolved murder of her favorite teacher, uncovering secrets about her school, her teacher, and her ex-best friend in the process.

Cover of What's Coming to Me
Francesca
Padilla
2022

After the ice cream stand where she works is robbed, seventeen-year-old Minerva Gutiérrez plans to get revenge on her predatory boss while navigating grief, anger, and dreams of escape from her dead-end hometown.

YA Series

Cover of A Good Girl’s Guide to M
Holly
Jackson

As her senior capstone project, Pippa Fitz-Amobi is determined to find the real killer in a closed, local murder case, but not everyone wants her meddling in the past.

Cover of Pride and Premeditation: J
Tirzah
Price
2021

The Jane Austen Murder Mysteries series is a clever retelling of Pride and Prejudice that reimagines the iconic settings, characters, and romances in a thrilling and high-stakes whodunit.

Cover of Project Nemesis
Brendan
Reichs

As the Anvil, an enormous asteroid, threatens to end all life on Earth, sixteen-year-old Min begins to uncover a lifetime of lies, a sinister conspiracy involving all students in her sophomore class in Fire Lake, Idaho.

Cover of Truly Devious
Maureen
Johnson

The Truly Devious case--an unsolved kidnapping and triple murder that rocked Ellingham Academy in 1936--has consumed Stevie Bell for years. It's the very reason she came to the academy.