Family Mysteries Poisonous Promises Collectors Edition-RAZOR

Holly Beth Walker,tag_hash_106________________________ Sounds like one of the Meg Mysteries. Meg Duncan and her friend, Kerry, solve mysteries. I believe Ghost of Hidden Springs involves a little girl and her mother coming to Meg's town because of an inheritance. One of the conditions of the inheritance is that the girl has a birthday party which is a reenactment of the tragic birthday party many years ago where noone showed up to the party and the little girl ran down to the river. Ends up the sister of the girl who died was jealous and had taken all the invitations and hidden them in a window seat and nailed it shut. The sister lived to be an old lady and regretted her actions so she wrote in her will about having another birthday party.

Might M130a be one of the Trixie Belden books? This was a series with Trixie as a "girl detective" similar to Nancy Drew. I read them as a kid, and seem to remember one of them having a story line similar to the one described here, though I can't remember the title of it. Trixie also comes from a large family, as the person asking thought,...and her friend was either an only child or only had one sibling, I can't remember which.

M130a mystery: I've found a copy of the suggested Meg and the Ghost of Hidden Springs, by Holly Beth Walker, illustrated by Cliff Schule, published Whitman 1970. There are some very close correspondences - the two girl detectives are Meg Duncan, who is an only child, and her friend Kerry Carmody, who has 6 siblings. Kathleen Hannigan and her mother will inherit the old Hannigan mansion if they fulfill the terms of Amelia Hannigan's will. Kathleen looks just like Amelia's sister Kathleen, shown in a family portrait. The dead Kathleen's room is kept as she left it, and the pink satin dress she drowned in was cleaned and left lying on the bed. Kathleen died on her sixteenth birthday, when no one from the town showed up for the grand party, and she ran crying from the house, slipped by the stream and knocked her head on a rock. Meg discovers that Amelia had hidden the invitations, and finds them in a nailed-shut window seat.

Walker, Holly Beth. tag_hash_110_________________________________ Racine, WI: Golden Press, 1978. "Meg and her friend Kerry tackle the oldest mystery in Hidden Springs. These twelve year-old supersleuths get haunted by the ghosts of the Hannigan family. When fifteen year-old Kathleen, the heir of the old Hannigan mansion, arrives from California with her mother, the girls put on their bravest faces and look for answers to the ghosts that haunt the mansion. This book is fun and exciting and is a non-stop read all the way through. This is a great book for young middle-schoolers. It would probably appeal to both boys and girls, and it is a part of a series of books, which could offer some foundation for the discussion of mystery as genre."

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I read this book (I think) between the ages of 8 and 12. I was born in 1978. I don't think it is a Nancy Drew book, although it could be. The story involves a mystery of a young girl who suffered some kind of untimely death. Years later another girl (either at her home or summer home) is haunted by her presence. The only other thing I remember is that the culmination of the book takes place on the night of the living girl's birthday party. I think the book was set in the 60's or 70's and I remember there being a lake and possibly a gazebo. The birthday girl is wearing a yellow or a white dress. I think it was a 16th birthday and I also think that it was a dance.