Meg of Mystery Mountain

At Highacres Seminary, popularity is currency, and Jane Abbott has decided she wants nothing to do with it. Watching the other girls swarm around the charismatic Marion Starr while she and her two loyal friends stand apart, Jane lets her contempt show in a single, eloquent shrug. But as the boat pulls away from the dock, carrying the four girls toward whatever adventure awaits, the careful hierarchies of schoolyard politics begin to unravel. There's something about the enigmatic Marion Starr that doesn't quite add up, and Jane, for all her proud detachment, finds herself drawn into a mystery that will demand more of her than she ever planned to give. The mountain in the title promises secrets waiting to be uncovered, and somewhere among the cliques and cruelties of adolescence, a darker truth lurks. For readers who relish the sharp observations of early twentieth-century girls' fiction, this is a story about what happens when pride meets curiosity, and neither emerges unchanged.