The book is gone. The case is still locked. And nobody believes a fourteen-year-old.
When a priceless first-edition copy of The Fernwood Secret vanishes overnight from a sealed glass display case, the Maplewood Middle School principal chalks it up to a clerical error. There's no broken glass. No forced locks. No security footage. No reason ? as far as the adults are concerned ? to make a fuss.
Juniper "Juni" Calloway isn't convinced.
As president of the Maplewood Puzzle Club, Juni has a talent for noticing things that don't quite fit: a too-steady expression on a librarian's face, a visiting book dealer who looks at hinges instead of covers, a cipher hidden inside a returned library book that wasn't there when it left. One impossibility is a coincidence. Three are a case.
Racing against the clock before the smooth-talking Mr. Ashford slips out of town, Juni and her three mismatched teammates dive into an investigation that leads them through a labyrinth of old card catalogs, encrypted clues, and small-town secrets stretching back twenty years ? all while dodging the chaos of the school Book Fair, a well-meaning substitute teacher who can't keep a secret, and a rival student who knows far too much and refuses to say why.
But the deeper Juni digs, the more complicated the truth becomes. Because this mystery doesn't end with a villain in handcuffs. It ends with a question she never expected to have to answer: what do you do when the person who broke the rules might have had the best reason to?
Perfect for fans of From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, The Westing Game, and the Sammy Keyes series. The Locked Library is the first book in the Maplewood Puzzle Club Mystery series ? a cozy mystery for curious, puzzle-loving readers ages 10 to 14 who like their mysteries clever, their characters real, and their endings honest.
