The Ragged Suitcase — Lee Ann Hager

Ages 8-12--Cricket Kelly is no ordinary twelve year-old. Shes super smart and very observant, and she has one week until her birthday to prove it. Crickets life transforms when she begins receiving strange clues that require her to solve the mystery of where she will spend her first summer vacation away from home. Enter kookie Aunt Lila, the orchestrator of a complex plot to take Cricket to Lighthouse Cove on Nantucket Island. Lilas work for the travel magazine, The Ragged Suitcase, prompts Crickets investigation into some scary island mysteries.


Following the clues to a long-ago disappearance, one of the first people Cricket encounters on Nantucket is Nate Tucker, a scary old man who holds a very old grudge. In an effort to escape Tucker, she meets Michael Adams, a dreamy fourteen year-old boy with sandy-blonde hair. Michael accompanies her on her mission to solve the infamous missing persons case of Hattie Mae Bellarose, a childrens mystery writer from Savannah, Georgia. Armed with nothing but her courage, her smarts, and some old notebooks left to one of Hattie Maes relatives, Cricket manages to turn this hundred year-old cold case into one that will go down in the record books. Cricket figures out the clues and just in time. More importantly though, she discovers that you shouldnt judge people before you get to know them.