Most Popular Books by Jane Louise Curry

Poor Tom’s Ghost—dramatic, wholly convincing, a fascinating intermingling of the centuries—portrays a family whose uncertain bonds are tested and strengthened by a threat from the past. When the Nicholas family first sees the derelict old house near London that has been left to them in Aunt Deb’s will, they are sadly disappointed. Thirteen-year-old Roger is the most disappointed, since, having moved place to place all his life with his gifted actor-father, he longs for some measure of stability. Then Roger and his father discover, under peeling wallpaper and rotted paneling, traces of a much older, more graceful house, and their misgivings disappear—until, one night, the house is filled with a sound of wild grieving that Roger traces to an empty room. Only Roger—and later his small stepsister Pippa—sees the ghosts, among them is that of Tom Garland, a well-known actor in Shakespeare’s time. But Roger’s father, playing Hamlet in the famous National Theatre, is caught up, unknowingly, in Tom’s old tragedy. It is a frightened Roger who has to risk his life to find a way to mend the past before the present becomes its tragic echo.

Retells twenty-six tales from Native Americans whose traditional lands were in Texas and the Southern Plains, and provides a brief introduction to the history of each tribe.

Tee (Leticia) Woodie and her family have moved into a big, old house that is part of her father''s inheritance from Great-uncle Sebastian. While exploring the contents of Sebastian''s antiques-and-junk store, they find a parcel marked "For dear Leticia, my Shabti Box." The decorated box holds a colorful wooded figure of a girl in mummy wrappings.

As the child of two musicians, twelve-year-old James has no interest in music until he discovers a portal to seventeenth-century London in his uncle''s basement, and finds himself in a situation where his beautiful voice and the fact that he is biracial might serve him well.

A fantasy about the past and the present, about good and evil.

Ten-year-old Felicity''s existence in a dreadful eighteenth-century orphanage, owned and run for profit by Parson Grout, is changed forever when the Parson steals a sturdy wooden cupboard believing it to be magical.

Legends of the making of California, the theft of Dawn and fire, coyote tales.

Though two boys are paying attention to her, a seventeen-year-old in East Liverpool, Ohio, is painfully shy until she discovers in herself the eye, hand, and heart of a potter.

When their farm and everything on it is reduced to miniature by a mysterious machine, Pete and his grandmother do all they can to keep themselves and their farm from being lost forever.

A Sixteen-year-old Prodigy uses his mentor''s invention to go into the past to exorcise his unreturned love for a beautiful girl, and discovers a mystery involving another of the professor''s inventions.

A group of children in a crowded school invent a girl who does not exist and find their prank played back at them in a most unexpected way.

Rebellious and unhappy at being shipped off to live with strange kinfolk in the mountains of West Virginia, a young boy is drawn into an ancient conflict that moves back and forth in time.

When he exchanges medallions with the boy who appears to be his double, Dave goes back 800 years in time to medieval Wales.

In sixteenth-century Wales, a young girl''s fair hair and lame foot make her suspect to her neighbors who fear that she is a fairy child and capable of magic.

Gordy and his friends find secret rooms, mysterious burglaries, and a shadowy villain on the trail of a treasure supposedly lost in Johnstown''s flood of 1889.

A collection of twenty tales from the different tribes that are part of the Algonquian peoples who lived from the Middle Atlantic States up through eastern Canada.

In 1842, eleven-year-old twins, whose father runs a boat on the Juniata Canal in Pennsylvania, learn of a Harrisburg bookseller''s plan to steal Charles Dickens''s newly finished novel while Dickens himself is touring the U.S.

Recounts the experiences of an Ancient Roman girl at the hands of the Etruscan king Larth Porsena.

The three Bird children become involved in a plot that could be literally earth shaking when they fly to Austria with their mother in search of the missing Mr. Bird.

Just after moving into their grandmother''s house in Pittsburgh, the five Smith children must uncover a long-standing scam to steal the houses of old people before Grandma Smith loses her home. Sequel to The Big Smith Snatch..

When he goes to live with his cousin at the family''s ancestral home, a ten-year-old boy finds a secret room and clues that could help unravel the riddle of the family treasure.

At war with his stepmother, in trouble at school, and desperately unhappy, thirteen-year-old Ray finds himself shipped off to distant family in the high mountain hollows of Western Virginia. There Ray encounters a strange world of mystery, where nothing quite makes sense. The mystery deepens when he discovers a great stone snake carved on the wall of an old coal mine high in the hollow. A piece of that stone draws Ray into a conflict that echoes an ancient tragedy played out over sixteen hundred years before.

A prophecy inscribed on stone, a bronze Celtic bell, a fabled tree, and a long, straight passageway beneath a hill-threatened by a drilling company and a woman who strangely resembles Morgan Le Fay--lead four children into a stitch in time and to the Sleepers, an early Celtic King Arthur, and his men.

While exploring what they think is an underground passage, three children are transported back in time to an ancient Indian civilization.

Three children in an English village face danger as they try to track down the criminals responsible for burglaries in a strange old house.

When Miggle creates a make-believe treasure hunt, she never dreams it could turn into a very real and dangerous battle against an ancient evil-or that nearby strip-mining could be a threat not only to the landscape but also to the existence of the Fair Folk who dwell within the mountain. In the end, it''s up to Miggle and her siblings and cousins to help these mysterious and beautiful people find their way to safety.

Searching for his missing "dreamstone" and the answers to the mystery surrounding it, Runner ventures into the northern Icelands and the grim mountain fortress that lies there. In a night of terror and destruction beyond imagining, part of the dreamstone''s riddle is solved. With extraordinary skill and depth of imagination, Jane Louise Curry has created an ancient world filled with brooding mystery, danger, and forces of power. The magical characters cast their own spell in this suspenseful fantasy.

When he exchanges medallions with the boy who appears to be his double, Dave goes back 800 years in time to medieval Wales.

Interest level: Grades 4-8.

The characters from The Daybreakers return for more time-travel adventures. An imaginary girl, invented by Callie and her friends as an elaborate hoax, takes on an unexpected reality that turns out to be at the heart of a magical mystery from the long-ago past.

This collection of 28 tales from the Cherokee, Choctaw, Seminole, Cree, and other Native American tribes of the Southeastern United States includes witty tricksters, daring adventures, and supernatural events. Illustrations.

When Callie and the other children stumble upon an ancient artifact, they find themselves facing a terrible danger from the long-ago past. Time overlaps in a mysterious way, while the children fight to help an ancient tribe in both the past and in the present.

Sir Cleges so pleases King Uther that he is given a castle in Wales where he can distribute food to the poor each Christmas.

The unusual dollhouse Mindy purchases at an auction expands when Mrs. Bright touches it and Mindy and Mrs. Bright enter the world of miniatures.

When their pregnant mother gets sick on the eve of their move from California to Pennsylvania, the four younger Smith children find themselves in the custody of the city leaving their twelve-year-old sister Boo, with the help of eccentric old Auntie Moss, to somehow trace their whereabouts and get the family back together again.