The Botanic Hill Detectives Mysteries Series

Kids, get ready to meet your four new heroes! Come help them solve . . . Nutmeg Street: Egyptian Secrets, Book 1 in the Botanic Hill Detectives Mysteries series for kids aged 9-12 is a page turner already earning five-star reviews! Who really stole the ancient Egyptian burial urn containing a mummified cobra? Why are the four teen detectives being stalked and spied on? Who means to prevent them from solving this important case? They intend to find out. . . . World-famous Egyptologist Dr. Winston Thornsley died suddenly two months ago in disgrace. His widow, Ida Thornsley, remains convinced that her husband was falsely accused of stealing the ancient burial urn he discovered in Egypt last summer, but local and federal law enforcement officers are stumped.             Mrs. Thornsley, desperate for answers, calls in her thirteen-year-old neighbors, the Botanic Hill Detectives—twins Lanny and Lexi Wyatt, Moki Kalani, and Rani Kumar. Their exciting mission? To find the urn and its real thief, bring the criminal to justice, and exonerate Dr. Thornsley so his spotless reputation can be restored.             A roomful of venomous snakes, the poisoned Egyptian pond, and Dragon Pit Man are just a few of the tests awaiting the four tech-savvy teenagers. As the detectives begin to unravel the sinister plot, the mystery takes a dangerous turn. Answers are at their fingertips—if they can only convince their parents to let them solve the case. 

In 1945, Isabela de Cordoba's great-grandfather, the famous silent movie actor Lorenzo de Cordoba, mysteriously hid a legendary, multimillion-dollar emerald somewhere on the family's sprawling Eucalyptus Street estate. Seventy years later, the gem remains concealed. Nicknamed the "Green Curse," the emerald is blamed for the Southern California familia's numerous, untimely deaths.   On her twenty-first birthday, Isabela receives a secret letter with a cryptic poem. These documents from the long-deceased Lorenzo invite her to hunt for the gemstone. But first, she must decipher the poem's six stanzas for clues.   To assist, Isabela hires her thirteen-year-old neighbors, the four Botanic Hill Detectives—twins Lanny and Lexi Wyatt, and their best friends, Moki Kalani and Rani Kumar. Eerie footsteps inside the mansion, unexplained occurrences in the adjacent cemetery, and the mysterious tenant in the backyard casita challenge them. But they ingeniously make progress on the poem's meaning with startling discoveries. Sliding wall panels, a secret room, and hidden passages reveal much. The detectives aren't the only ones looking for the emerald. The perilous race for the de Cordoba treasure is on!                                                                   

Saffron Street: Island Danger, a standalone, current-day historical fiction mystery, is Book 4 in the Botanic Hill Detectives Mysteries series. It is 233 pages in length. Watch out! There's trouble--even in paradise . . . A Tahitian black pearl necklace, missing for over eighty years, takes the thirteen-year-old Botanic Hill detectives—Lanny, Lexi, Moki, and Rani—from California to Oʿahu in one of the squad's most baffling cases yet! The teens' famous, elderly neighbor Mr. Itsuki Yamada hires them to find his family's valuable heirloom necklace. Soon, they become embroiled in a complex mystery wrapped around the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor, World War II Japanese internment camps, an international surfing competition, sea caves, kidnappings, more thefts, an island cult inspired by a Japanese legend, and strange goings on in an abandoned pineapple shack. Can the detectives prevent more crimes, avoid injury, and locate Mr. Yamada's pearl necklace before it's too late? Time matters—even in laid-back Hawaiʿi!

            Objects of value have been disappearing from the Mayfield family's rural California horse ranch. The Botanic Hill Detectives—Moki Kalani, Rani Kumar, and twins Lanny and Lexi Wyatt—are hired to come for a week to investigate.                    Legend has it somewhere on the Mayfields' forty-acre property is a long-lost gold mine. It was supposedly staked by thirteen-year-old Ben Mayfield's five-time great-grandfather, "Papa" Mayfield, in 1875.             Adding to the excitement, a nervous Ben reveals a frightening secret to the detectives. At the ranch, he alone has seen a threatening black-clad figure on horseback whom he calls the Phantom Rider. Who is this mysterious person? Is he responsible for the thefts? Where is the lost gold mine? And what's going on in the nearby, snake-infested ghost town of Rainbow Flats? The four intrepid detectives aim to find out.

Lenore Valentine Kirby's cryptic gravestone in a derelict cemetery beckons across centuries.   The four Botanic Hill Detectives—Lanny, Lexi, Moki, and Rani—stumble upon a mystery revealed by the deceased woman's descendant, Mr. Nigel Kirby. Can the teens decipher Lenore Kirby's gravestone image and messages? Their unusual, present-day case, incorporating the life and works of Gothic horror writer Edgar Allan Poe, takes the four out to Ravenswood, the Kirby family's Victorian home. But one solution leads to more puzzles! Will the detectives successfully decode all the special instructions they discover to help restore Mr. Poe's reputation, damaged by a real-life enemy, and reveal to the world a priceless treasure? Come lend the squad a hand!