Dorothy Gilman Books in Order

Former clown Jeremy Peel retrieves his daughter Jennie Margaret from an orphanage and takes her on a summer caravan trip. Their shaky reunion grows through travel, odd jobs, and second chances.

Fifteen-year-old Capri Maccomb and her mother inherit a run-down traveling carnival with debts and a crooked manager. Cleaning up the show becomes a test of courage, business sense, and loyalty.

Seventeen-year-old Marcy Drake feels stuck on a shabby Philadelphia street until inherited puppets offer a new plan. With her mother’s boarders, she helps build a puppet theater and finds purpose.

Sisters Tracy and Tina leave unhappy comfort behind for an inherited farmhouse in the Berkshires. A hard year of work, neighbors, and changing seasons teaches them how freedom can feel.

Four young telephone operators face love, ambition, loneliness, and class worries while working the same party line. Francine, Peggy, Tippy, and Mary each has to decide what kind of future she wants.

Papa Dolphin brings home an enormous table that barely fits the family apartment. When the Dolphins lose their home, the table becomes shelter, drawing help from a policeman, a wealthy woman, and the mayor.

Orphaned Becky Pumroy faces an unwanted marriage to a much older man with a sinister reputation. She runs away with her brother Eseck and discovers a frontier world more complex than she expected.

Kitty Boscz, newly out of high school, wants college and a better future despite life on the wrong side of town. A summer factory job challenges her pride, plans, and ideas of home.

An insecure young woman fears she is not good enough for the rich boy she loves. Her grandmother’s gift, an ancestor’s old diary, opens a story of courage in colonial Boston.

Four young women at the Hawley Institute of Art each hide a private fear or mistake. Friendship, romance, ambition, and prejudice shape their year as they learn what their masks are costing them.

Deborah and Ben Parker ride from their Massachusetts farm to Boston to reach their ill father. The road brings counterfeiters, fugitives, strangers, and danger, forcing Deborah to grow brave fast.

Bored widow Emily Pollifax wants to serve her country, so she walks into the CIA and volunteers. A simple courier job in Mexico goes badly wrong, revealing how resourceful she really is.

Melissa Aubrey travels to Europe after a broken marriage and a nervous breakdown, hoping to stand on her own. A stranger’s request to deliver a book pulls her into espionage and danger.

A Sunday phone call sends Mrs. Pollifax to Turkey, where she must replace a dead courier. The trail leads from city streets to a gypsy caravan, with international intrigue tucked into every turn.

A plea for passports reaches the CIA just as Mrs. Pollifax is tending her night-blooming cereus. Soon she is off on a mission where a new hat hides forged papers and danger waits at the border.

Mrs. Pollifax is sent to a Swiss health resort where spies are gathering and a package of plutonium has vanished. Her talent for reading people becomes as useful as her karate and her nerve.

Sister John and Sister Hyacinthe arrive at an inherited house expecting duty, not chaos. A wounded man, hidden money, ghostly frights, and gangsters push the nuns into a mystery with real danger.

Madame Karitska can see what others miss, including signs of murder. After meeting Detective-Lieutenant Pruden, her unusual gift draws her into cases where common sense matters as much as vision.

Mrs. Pollifax joins a safari to photograph the guests and identify an assassin targeting Zambia’s president. When her film vanishes and terrorists strike, the holiday cover story gives way to real danger.

In this memoir, Dorothy Gilman leaves familiar routines for a small Nova Scotia village. She writes about solitude, neighbors, work, herbs, and the slow discovery of a life she had to build herself.

Shy Amelia Jones buys an antique shop and finds a desperate message hidden in a barrel organ. Her search for the writer pulls her out of isolation and into a murder mystery rooted in the past.

Mrs. Pollifax poses as a tourist in China while guarding a CIA treasure and hunting for answers. The assignment carries her through political danger, misdirection, and the kind of trouble she handles best.

Sixteen-year-old Colin, grieving his parents’ deaths, enters a wizard’s maze in search of relief. Beyond the locked door waits a harsh magical land that tests whether he can face his pain and live.

Jed Crane, an English indentured boy in occupied Boston, is sold to a kinder printer and drawn into the American Revolution. His loyalty is tested as rebels, British troops, and freedom’s cost become real.

Recently married and heading for China, Mrs. Pollifax is drawn into trouble at Feng Imports. Drugs, diamonds, a cat burglar, a psychic, and murder turn a trusted contact’s warning into a deadly puzzle.

Mrs. Pollifax agrees to one last errand in Thailand, then finds her contact dead and her husband kidnapped. The trail leads into the Thai countryside, where help and betrayal look dangerously alike.

In 1950 Burma, orphaned Gen Ferris tries to reach safety with little more than money, a slingshot, and a Burmese puppet. Capture by Red Chinese forces forces her into a dangerous escape plan.

Sent to Morocco to assist a shaky CIA agent, Mrs. Pollifax soon finds her first informant murdered. With impostors and enemies closing in, she has to decide whom to trust before the mission collapses.

In 1914 North Africa, Caressa’s husband is murdered and her caravan is seized. Disguised as a boy, she crosses a brutal desert world where survival depends on wit, courage, and a little stage magic.

Mrs. Pollifax photographs a quiet funeral near Washington and carries the pictures to Sicily for old friend John Farrell. What should be a simple errand turns into assassins, false identities, and danger in a mountain village.

When Mrs. Pollifax finds Kadi Hopkirk hiding in her closet, the girl’s panic is no joke. A chase to Manhattan uncovers African politics, a hidden message, and a safe house that is anything but safe.

Kadi Hopkirk travels to Ubangiba for her friend Sammat’s coronation, and Mrs. Pollifax follows to keep watch. Rumors of lion killings and sorcery threaten the new king before he can take the throne.

Mrs. Pollifax and John Farrell must smuggle a dangerous manuscript out of Jordan. Once they are followed across the Middle East, a simple courier job becomes a test of nerve and trust.

Novelist Andrew Thale visits a neglected family house in Massachusetts and finds it full of unexpected residents. Their offbeat household charms him, but a break-in and a disappearance suggest old secrets are still active.

After a young American heroine vanishes in Damascus, Mrs. Pollifax poses as the missing woman’s aunt. Her search through souks and desert roads pulls her into a plot with international stakes.

Madame Karitska returns to sort through a cluster of strange cases, from a violinist’s death to a cult threat and a child accused of murder. Her visions point Detective-Lieutenant Pruden toward hidden patterns.