Former beauty queen and fledgling private investigator Madeline Maclin has married her best friend, Jerry Fairweather, and settled into his old house in the small town of Celosia, North Carolina. Jerry seems to have given up his cons and schemes but not his phony séances. Then Amelia Lever, an unpopular teacher at Celosia Elementary School, dies mysteriously. Convinced hers is not a natural death, Maddy starts to investigate. And then comes Maddy's...

"'Few true friends have I known and two were giraffes . . . ' Woodrow Wilson Nickel, age 105, feels his life ebbing away. But when he learns giraffes are going extinct, he finds himself recalling an unforgettable experience he cannot take to his grave. It's 1938. The Great Depression lingers. Hitler is threatening Europe, and world-weary Americans long for wonder. They find it in two giraffes who miraculously survive a hurricane while crossing the...

Recounts how three elephants in a Tokyo zoo were put to death because of the war, focusing on the pain shared by the elephants and the keepers who must starve them.

A.J. and his fellow third-graders from Ella Mentry School, including new student Alexia, go on a field trip to the zoo, where they meet a very strange zookeeper.

Meg Langslow is pulled into another mystery when she discovers a group of penguins and a dead body hiding in her father's basement, and although Meg's dad can explain why the penguins are there, the dead man is another story, and Meg sets out to clear her father's name and discover the victim's identity.

When Balthazar Jones is tasked with setting up an elaborate menagerie within the Tower of London's walls to house the many exotic animals gifted to the Queen, life at the Tower gets all the more interesting. Penguins escape, giraffes are stolen, and the Komodo dragon sends innocent people running for their lives. Balthazar is in charge and things are not exactly running smoothly. Then his wife Hebe decides to leave him and his beloved tortoise "runs"...

"The Elephant of Belfast chronicles a seven-month period of time when the Germans unexpectedly bombed Belfast, Northern Ireland, also known as the Belfast Blitz. Through the lens of the Bellevue Zoo and one of its zookeepers, twenty-year-old Hettie Quin, the novel animates how the war irrevocably impacted-and shaped the lives of Belfast's citizens in broad and intimate ways. In October 1940, Hettie meets Violet, a three-year-old Asian elephant arriving...