Bianca Balducci Mystery

Allow us to introduce Bianca Balducci, a normal fifteen-year-old girl attending a co-ed parochial school in Baltimore, Maryland. She worries about her hair, her clothes, her would-be boyfriend Doug...and solving real-life mysteries? That's right! Watch out Nancy Drew, Bianca is on the case and this case revolves around Sadie Sinclair, the new girl Bianca has gone out of her way to befriend, only to discover that she's more than a little odd, and hiding something really BIG! Did someone actually see Sadie, who's only fifteen, driving a car? Why did she freak out at the idea of playing the lead in the school play? And why is Sadie being stalked by a nefarious duo of grown-ups? Combining slapstick with intelligent wit, Uncovering Sadie's Secrets is a delightful, thoroughly entertaining mystery that pulls, grabs, and sticks while providing laugh-out-loud moments and smiles throughout.

Bianca Balducci, everybody's favorite teenage amateur sleuth, is back on the case, and this time the resourceful Baltimorean has her hands more than full. On top of school (St. John's), her two bickering friends (Kerrie and Sarah), and boy trouble (Doug), Bianca is brought in to prove the innocence of Hector, Sarah's latest heart throb, who's considered the prime suspect in a clever switcheroo at the local art museum - several paintings have gone missing, and forgeries hung in their place. But things get awfully complicated when Connie, Bianca's PI older sister, is hired by the museum to formally investigate the crime. And that's just the half of it. Doug, Bianca's fabulous new boyfriend, isn't paying as much attention to her as she'd like, while a charming and rich Brit named Neville seems more than willing to take Doug's place. Can Bianca manage to keep Doug's affections while gently fending off Neville? And what about the Christmas shopping she must do, the party she's got to plan, and the PI sister she desperately wants to impress? Most important, can she repair a home perm gone so awry she can only hope to have the appearance of human hair? In this story of mis-assumptions, Bianca learns that things are not always as they seem, that all cases are not so open-and-shut, and that connected with every valuable painting is the possibility of a forgery. Finding the Forger, the sequel to the acclaimed series debut Uncovering Sadie's Secrets, proves to be another hilarious adventure in the world of Bianca Balducci, regular teenager turned mystery-solver extraordinaire.

It's Bianca Balducci's junior year in high school, and she's got more than enough on her plate - impending SAT scores, college admissions, and the mixed signals of sort-of-boyfriend Doug. But when she finds out her mother, widowed as long as Bianca can remember, plans to marry Officer Steve Paluchek, a longtime family friend, things get even worse very, very quickly - because Paluchek, according to Bianca's private-eye sister Connie, is the man responsible for the death of their police officer father. And so Bianca is pulled into her most personal case yet - learning, for the first time, who her father truly was, even as she tries to determine who killed him. Was it Paluchek? He does seem to have ties to the immigrant smuggling ring their father was investigating. Or was it Paluchek's partner? And can Bianca figure it out before an increasingly irrational Connie makes a fatal mistake? Recovering Dad is more than simply the third installment of the Bianca Balducci mystery series, and the best Bianca mystery to date. It features more than Bianca's engaging, funny, and always conflicted voice. And it's more than her latest set of concerns. Yes, she's terrified about applying to college. Yes, her relationship with Doug isn't working the way she'd hoped - the two do seem to be drifting apart. And yes, everything her best friend Kerrie says only makes her feel worse. Placed in a situation where she has to step up, Bianca embarks on a momentous journey toward adulthood, and toward new relationships, including one with a potential new boyfriend. And she finds she must become a detective totally in her own right. In Recovering Dad, Bianca not only finds out the truth about her late father, but she grows into a stronger, more self-confident, more self-reliant person. Readers will have a blast reading Recovering Dad. Edgar finalist Libby Sternberg spins a yarn that will keep them glued to the page.