Arcadia Public Library

When college student David Rain rents a room in an unusual boardinghouse full of clay dragons, he has no idea that they, along with some lively squirrels, will help jumpstart his writing career.

In 1934, during the Depression, Kit's cantankerous uncle comes to live in the Cincinnati boardinghouse run by her parents, enlisting her aid in transcribing his complaining letters to the editor of the local newspaper and inspiring her to write a different kind of letter of her own.

In 1934 Kit finds that she has hard lessons to learn about the Depression both at home, where she is helping her mother run a boarding house while her father looks for a new job, and at school, where a fight spoils the preparations for the Thanksgiving pageant.

Two orphaned sisters are sent to live at a boarding home run by the cruel and greedy Mrs. Monday, where they dream about someday having enough to eat and being able to experience a real Christmas.

"Angry with her mother, twelve-year-old runaway Ren finds an unusual boarding house in a nearby ghost town, Fortune, where she meets some interesting people and learns of a forgotten treasure from when the town was famous for buttons made of Mississippi River shells."

Entries from the long-lost journal of Ven, a Nain youth, relate his adventures as he faces pirates and is rescued by a mermaid and a kindly sea captain who sends Ven to an inn, where he encounters fairies, ghosts, and other strange boarders.

Junior sleuth Maisie Hitchins, who lives in her grandmother's boarding house in Victorian London, uncovers an intriguing plot involving stolen sausages, pilfered halfpennies, and a fast-paced bicycle chase.

In Victorian London, Maisie Hitchins, a young detective who lives in her grandmother's boarding house, finds herself immersed in the excitement and glamour of the theater when she investigates the theft of a valuable necklace belonging to an actress friend of a longtime boarder.

While researching the existence of dragons for an essay that could win him a trip to the Arctic, David opens himself to the possibility that a great, ancient treasure exists there, guarded by bears, and that he has some role in its protection.