Mysteries of Trash and Treasure Books in Order

Mysteries of Trash and Treasure is a contemporary mystery series that treats old letters, photos, and forgotten boxes as clues rather than clutter. Colin’s mom runs a minimalist style decluttering business, while Nevaeh’s dad proudly calls himself the Junk King and fills their yard and storage units with things he might sell someday. The kids meet when Colin rescues a shoebox of 1970s letters from the trash and Nevaeh uncovers a suspiciously empty storage locker.

In The Secret Letters, their shared investigation pulls them into a decades old friendship drama and a mystery tied to women’s liberation, the Equal Rights Amendment, and how families decide what to keep. The second book, The Ghostly Photos, revolves around eerie old snapshots and a funeral home, sending Colin and Nevaeh digging into Great Depression era history and what communities choose to remember or forget. The final volume, The Stolen Key, brings the focus closer to home as a package on Colin’s doorstep and a single key force him to face long buried questions about his own missing father.

Each case asks the pair to balance curiosity with respect for other people’s secrets. Along the way, the series quietly explores class differences, hoarding versus minimalism, and how kids can carve out their own values when their parents disagree.

This page organizes the trilogy, sketches the core cast on both sides of the Junk King versus declutterer rivalry, and helps you see how the historical threads in each book line up with the mysteries Colin and Nevaeh solve in the present.