American Girl Mysteries Series by Kathleen Ernst, Elizabeth McDavid Jones

Kirsten Larson has been living on the Minnesota frontier for only a few weeks when her neighbor and friend, Erik Sandahl, disappears. Erik had promised to help the Larsons at harvest time--and he owes Uncle Olav money. Has Erik run out on his promises? Everyone seems to think so--except Kirsten. Can she figure out what's happened to her friend?Takes place in 1854.

Kit lands a summer job writing a children's column for her local newspaper. She decides to look for story ideas at the Cincinnati Zoo, where her friend Stirling works as a guide and her old friend Will, the hobo, has a job cleaning cages. As Kit noses around the zoo, she stumbles into some strange doings in the monkey house. Her reporter's instincts tell her that she's onto something worth investigating--and she's determined to get the story.

Kit writes a newspaper story about how her dog, Grace, saved the Kittredges and their boarders from a house fire. Grace becomes a local celebrity, and all the attention is a lot of fun for Kit--until the night Grace mysteriously vanishes. But who would take Kit's dog, and why? At the end of the story, the Looking Back section provides interesting facts about pets during the Great Depression.

Felicity has just said good-bye to her mother, who's going on a trip and leaving Felicity in charge of the house. Mother's carriage has barely left before a surprise package arrives, holding silver heirlooms that have been passed down in the Merriman family for a hundred years. Felicity doesn't believe in ghosts . . . but what else can explain the odd and eerie things that begin to happen once the heirlooms arrive?