Joan Lowery Nixon

On a walk in the woods, Sean and Brian find a scary footprint
Sean Quinn does not like the sound of spending a weekend in a neighborhood named Grizzly Hill. Although his friend Alan assures him the development has been bear-free for a century, Sean is not convinced. The woods are thick and dark, and there's an old grizzly den not far from Alan's house. And when Brian discovers a strange footprint on a forest path, Sean starts to wish he...

Jenny and her mother hunt a killer while fearing for their own safety, after the reading of their millionaire cousin's will leads to the murder of another cousin.

A collection of stories about eerie encounters in various ghost towns across the United States. Each story is accompanied by an afterword about the actual town on which the story is based.

Inside a time capsule, Brian and Sean discover a decades-old mystery
In 1918, the people of Redoaks buried a time capsule full of messages for the future. Besides all the grown-up stuff, the fourth-graders of 1918 included a packet of letters to the fourth-graders of today—which means Sean Quinn is about to get a letter straight from the past! But when it comes time to crack the capsule’s seal, Sean and his brother Brian learn...

In 1860, when their widowed mother can no longer support them, six siblings are sent on the orphan train by the Children's Aid Society of New York City to live with farm families in Missouri.

In 1860, having traveled with his young sister from New York to a foster home on a farm inear St. Joseph, Missouri, ten-year-old Danny plots to get his newly-widowed foster father to send for and marry his mother.

In 1861, while living with his foster parents at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, twelve-year-old Mike Kelly and his best friend Todd Blakely join the Union army as drummer boys but their dreams of glory end when they experience the full horrors of war at the Battle of Wilson's Creek in Missouri.

Rebekah, a fifteen-year-old Jewish immigrant arriving in New York City in 1902, almost abandons her dream of getting an education when she is forced to work in a sweatshop.

In 1902 fifteen-year-old Rose travels from Ireland to join family members in Chicago, where she must use all her resources to deal with her father's drinking and her brothers' dangerous involvement in politics.

With her brother in a coma following a hit-and-run accident, a high school senior investigates the incident, stirring up animosity in the small, tight west Texas community where her family has recently moved.