Mary Downing Hahn Books in Order

Shy, too-tall Emily dreads another lonely summer until Sara, a brash New Yorker who will not be pushed around, moves in next door. Their uneasy friendship forces Emily to face peer pressure, risky dares, and what it means to stand up for herself.

Laura is desperate to stop her parents’ divorce, so she turns to a strange old woman in town who might be a real witch. When the spell to bring her family back together has frightening consequences, Laura has to decide what she is truly willing to risk.

Assigned to write a book with Daphne, the quiet girl everyone mocks, Jessica slowly discovers the painful secret behind Daphne’s odd behavior. Telling the truth could rescue Daphne and her sister, but it might also destroy the fragile friendship they have built.

When her father loses his job, Kathleen and her sisters must leave Baltimore for a cramped house by the bay with difficult relatives and glamorous cousin Fay. A summer of crushes, quarrels, and secrets forces Kathleen to confront changing family loyalties and her own anger.

After Molly’s family moves into a converted country church beside an old graveyard, her troubled stepsister Heather begins talking to the ghost of a drowned girl. As Helen’s grip on Heather tightens, Molly must face a terrifying haunting to save a child who seems to hate her.

Tallahassee Talley Higgins is used to a rambling, carefree life with her impulsive mother. When Mom ships her off to strict Aunt Thelma in Maryland, Talley clings to the hope she will be reclaimed, even as school trouble and painful truths force her to question where she really belongs.

Kelly’s school project on homelessness draws her to a silent, troubled veteran who spends his days in the library. Her clumsy attempts to help him backfire with tragic results, pushing Kelly and her own ex-soldier father to confront war, guilt, and the meaning of compassion.

Living in her grandmother’s boarding house, twelve-year-old Madigan dreams that the handsome new tenant might be the father she has never met. As a rash of burglaries sweeps the town, her fantasy collides with reality and pulls her into the middle of a very real crime.

Grieving her father’s death, Ashley moves into a forbidding old house with a landlady who hates children and a garden no one is allowed to enter. There she finds a buried doll and a ghostly cat that lead her into the past, where righting an old wrong may help her heal.

Best friends Matt and Parker think camping in the woods will be an adventure, until they discover a body in the creek. Convinced that Parker’s mother’s charming boyfriend is involved in drug dealing and murder, the boys launch a dangerous investigation that soon puts them in the killer’s sights.

In 1944, while their brothers fight overseas, Margaret and her friend Elizabeth see war as distant glory and Gordy Smith as nothing but a bully. Discovering Gordy’s brother hiding in the woods as a deserter shatters those certainties and forces the girls to rethink what courage really looks like.

Dragged along on their parents’ honeymoon in Spain, feuding new stepsisters Felix and Amy can barely stand each other. When Felix’s bragging to a charming stranger leads to the three kids being kidnapped, the girls must work together to outwit their captors and find a way home.

Quiet, bookish Lauren never expected school heartthrob Spencer to choose her as his confidante. Their intense senior-year romance pulls her into his world of wealth, family secrets, and dark moods, leaving Lauren to decide how far love can go in saving someone who may not want to be saved.

Spending the summer in his family’s creaky old house, Drew meets Andrew, a sickly boy from 1910 who looks exactly like him. When the cousins swap places so Andrew can be cured, Drew finds himself trapped in the past, battling a bully and time itself to get home.

Sent to help run her father’s isolated Maine inn, sixteen-year-old Cynda feels lonely and unwanted until the arrival of the mesmerizing Vincent Morthanos. As her fascination turns to dread and her little half brother begins to weaken, Cynda must break free of a vampire’s deadly charm.

After his violent father is jailed for nearly killing his brother, tough thirteen-year-old Gordy is shipped to his strict grandmother’s house in North Carolina. There, a friendship with wheelchair-using William and Grandma’s unflinching love slowly show him he does not have to repeat his father’s life.

Disguised as a boy and calling herself Eli, twelve-year-old Eliza flees cruel relatives to search for her missing father in the Old West. She falls in with Calvin Featherbone, a talkative gentleman outlaw whose bungled schemes lead them from one scrape to another, toward a showdown neither expects.

Back in the Maryland town he hoped never to see again, eighth-grader Gordy Smith feels trapped by his family’s bad reputation and his own tough-guy act. Caught between old troublemaking friends and a new chance with former enemy Liz, he has to decide whether he can finally change.

In early-twentieth-century Baltimore, eight-year-old Anna spends a year testing the limits of home and neighborhood, from racing on roller skates down a cobblestone hill to riding the trolley alone. Everyday adventures with friends and family capture the small rebellions and joys of growing up.

On the eve of the Civil War, fourteen-year-old Jesse makes a promise to a dying enslaved woman: he will take her young son Perry north to safety in Baltimore. Their dangerous journey through slave catchers and divided loyalties forces Jesse to learn what it truly means to keep a promise.

Thrilled to escape a sweltering Baltimore summer, nine-year-old Anna spends a week on her aunt and uncle’s Maryland farm. Chores, animals, and wide-open fields are exciting enough, but matching wits with Theodore, her uncle’s prickly orphaned nephew, turns the visit into a funny, hard-won friendship.

When Haswell Magruder’s family shelters a wounded Confederate soldier, Union troops retaliate by burning their Virginia farmhouse and killing his mother. Leading his little sister across a ravaged landscape to find relatives and his older brother, Haswell comes of age amid the brutal last days of the Civil War.

Diana and her brother Georgie live by strict rules in the woods behind a crumbling mansion: never be seen, never cross the boundary, never enter the house. When a lonely caretaker’s daughter arrives and Diana breaks the rules to befriend her, the ghosts of a terrible past are unleashed.

Third-grader Janey never goes anywhere without a Bob the Dog Detective book and dreams of meeting her favorite author, Lily May Appleton. On a chaotic class trip to a book festival, her daydreaming leaves her lost, upset, and in the unexpected company of a stranger who understands her perfectly.

Jen is delighted when her father inherits a rambling stone castle in West Virginia, until his glamorous new girlfriend Moura begins to push her aside. After Jen accidentally breaks a delicate glass globe called a witch catcher, she uncovers imprisoned fairy children, an ancient feud, and a battle to free an enchanted world.

Spending the summer at a Maine lake with her little cousin Emma should be perfect, but Ali cannot forget the torn photograph she found at home, showing her mother, her aunt, and a missing third girl. When Emma befriends a sinister child named Sissy, long-buried secrets about a drowned girl rise from the deep.

Sent to help at their grandmother’s quiet Vermont inn, prank-loving siblings Travis and Corey stage fake hauntings for fun and better publicity. Their tricks accidentally awaken the real spirits of abused children from the property’s past, and the kids must uncover the inn’s dark history to put the restless lovely bad ones to rest.

After Logan’s family moves into a shabby old house, he learns the previous owner was murdered there and accused of stealing money from a defunct amusement park. Teaming up with oddball neighbor Arthur, Logan follows clues through empty rides, small-town secrets, and real danger to find out what really happened.

In 1880s England, orphan Florence leaves a London charity home to live with wealthy relatives at gloomy Crutchfield Hall. There she encounters the vengeful ghost of her cousin Sophia, who died in a mysterious accident and now seeks to use Florence to reach her frail, terrified brother James.

In a Maryland suburb in 1956, Nora’s biggest worries are grades, boys, and pleasing her strict parents, until two girls from her circle are found shot dead in the park. As gossip blames local bad boy Buddy, Nora questions her faith, her friends, and whether the real killer is still watching.

Sixth-grader Brendan would rather disappear into his sketchbook than deal with bullies, his foster mother, or school. When he builds a hidden tree house in the Virginia woods and meets a mysterious old man who might be the legendary Green Man, Brendan begins to rethink what home and belonging could mean.

Daniel thinks tales of Old Auntie, the witch in the West Virginia woods, are just cruel stories the local kids tell about his family’s rundown new house. When his little sister Erica vanishes, leaving only her eerie look-alike doll, Daniel must face the legend head-on to bring her back.

In 1918, new girl Annie Browne is lonely enough to befriend Elsie, the class outcast no one else can stand. Pressured by other girls, Annie joins in tormenting her, until Elsie dies in the flu epidemic and returns as a furious ghost determined to make Annie her only friend forever.

Used to moving from one restoration project to another, twelve-year-old Jules dreads her family’s stay beside a decaying Virginia mansion called Oak Hill. Drawn to the locked upstairs room no one can open, she begins seeing the lonely ghost trapped there and sets out to rewrite the house’s tragic story.

Mollie has always been warned about the Kinde Folke, who steal human babies and leave changelings in their place. When her baby brother disappears after she removes his protective charm, Mollie sets out across eerie forests with the strange child left behind, whom she names Guest, to bargain for her brother’s life.

In this collection of twelve short tales, ordinary things a secondhand dress, a bus ride, a video game, a carved puppet turn frightening when they brush against the supernatural. Ghosts, curses, and eerie coincidences tangle with everyday worries, offering quick, chilling reads for fans of scary but not too scary stories.

Spending summer with her aunt in a sleepy town, Zoey is told to stay away from reclusive neighbor Miss Dupree and her swarm of black cats. When she rescues a scrawny stray and strange things begin happening, she and new friend Lila uncover a sinister magic that blurs the line between girl and cat.

Best friends Abbi and Skylar think they have found the perfect secret hangout in a tree house on the edge of town, where they spy on two adults meeting in the woods. After one of the women turns up dead, their summer becomes a dangerous puzzle about loyalty, truth, and the cost of staying silent.