I’d hold onto that…that’s number 31 in the series. The ones form 30 - 33 are all hard to find. Be sure to look on ebay for current prices, but you could probably get around $50 just for that one book. If you had the last one Tom Swift and the Galaxy Ghosts, I’ve seen it being sold for over $400.
I’m relatively certain that “Alvin’s Swap Shop” didn’t have bridgework as a plot point. I think that was the one where a boy from … a foreign country (I’m drawing a blank, but maybe Great Britain) hides out in Alvin’s basement and his sister develops a crush on him. She was fascinated by the way he used his fork while he ate.
There was also an Alvin book about Frankenstein’s Monster.
I read Alvin, The Three Investigators, Brains Benton (where I learned the meaning of the word “terpsichore”), The Mad Scientists Club (the way they got their submarine was really cool), Encyclopedia Brown, Danny Dunn, Tom Swift … man, this is a trip down Memory Lane.
Who remembers author John Bellairs? He had a bunch of books, some of which dealt with occultism. My favorite was The Figure In The Shadows. What a cool book.
Interestingly, Bellairs used real figures from the history of occultism; for example, Eliphaz Levi, who figures strongly in The Figure In The Shadows, was a real person who continues to be well-regarded among those who take occultism seriously (this would probably earn Bellairs his own head on a platter from Concerned Parents Groups if he’d published this today).
Okay, now I’ve got a query: who can help me with this title? It was a book that I think has the word cove in the title; The Hidden Cove or the Seventh Cove, something like that. I remember details of it: a young perhaps-witch named Mora, a ghostly house, a mysterious organ playing Nearer My God To Thee, nightly spirit visitations that could be thwarted by a special magic package hidden at the foot of the bed, counting seven waves on the beach . . . any of this ring a bell?
When I was young, I was the type who always had to be different. So when everyone else was reading the Hardy Boys, I stumbled across The Three Investigators, so I started reading all those. I think my favorite was The Case of the Stuttering Parrot (Too too too be or not too too too be). It was also through those books that I learned the Augustus Ceasar’s original name was Octavius
(August is your name and August is your fame and in August is your fortune)
I also read Encyclopedia Brown and The Mad Scientist’s Club.
If you have read this far in this thread, you probably need to run right out and get a series of books by one Mabel Maney starring Cherry Aimless, Nancy Clue, and the Hardly Boys. The titles are The Case of the Not-so-nice Nurse , The Case of the Good-for-nothing Girlfriend , and A Ghost in the Closet: A Hardly Boys Mystery .
In brief, they are parodies of Cherry Ames and Nancy Drew, in which all of the characters are gay. They are hysterical.
I remember these! The Secret Hide-Out and Enemies of the Secret Hide-Out, by John Lawrence Peterson.
Further research indicates that I misremembered. Eliphaz Levi does not appear in The Figure In The Shadows (the character in question is Eliphaz Moss).
Accordingly I withdraw my snark about Concerned Parents Groups.
That is all.
I think this thread already hit most of my childhood favorites…Danny Dunn, Homer Price, the Three Investigators, the Great Brain, McGurk, Alvin Fernald and Henry Reed.
Someone already mentioned The Westing Game and I’ll second that one. That book has many subtleties that make re-reading a new experience time and again.
Sounds like The Haunted Cove, by Elizabeth Baldwin Hazelton.
Check out the reviews for the plot on Amazon.com –
“12 year old Kevin and his 10 year old sister Christy, along with their mother, go to a seaside cottage in Oregon to spend a summer holiday. On their first afternoon there, they meet a girl named Mora, who tells them the cove next to theirs is haunted, and that a mysterious witch (who lives in a mansion in the cove next door) goes out on a rock in the middle of the sea to play her flute each night at sunset. Mora further impresses them when she tells them she, herself, has been studying witchcraft. The book follows their adventures in observing the witch, trying to find out how and why she goes out onto the rock, and why the cove is haunted.”
Does anyone else remember the Rick Brant series by John Blaine? It seemed to be a somewhat older version of the Hardy Boys, I remember in particular a bar fight scene (although the teens involved were only drinking Cokes). They also had an interesting use of book codes in the story.
The only book in the series that I read was The Caves of Fear, and I’ve never met anyone who has read any of the books in the series.
That’s it, MisterThyristor! Thanks.
Just out of curiousity, did you know that book already, or did you Google it? Because my Google-fu is not that bad, and I failed to find anything using the keywords I included in my first post
I’ve never read these books, probably because I never ran across them as a kid. This is the official website if you are interested. Click here. It looks like they have a large number of reprints for the Rick Brant series as well as Penny Parker and Judy Bolton. I may have to check some of these out.
Thanks for bringing this up, I was going to but you beat me to it! 
I wanted to be a nurse when I was growing up, and LOVED the Cherry Ames books - and thanks for the link to the website, too. I own (I think) three of the books (Student Nurse, Senior Nurse, and Army Nurse) but I seem to remember reading Private Duty Nurse for some reason.
I’ve got several Bobbsey Twins books, a couple Nancy Drew and a couple Hardy Boys books, and also am a BIG fan of the Great Brain books. My daughter is reading Bunnicula now, although I never had. Her (almost) stepmom turned her on to those.
And thanks to the OP for starting this thread!
You’re welcome.
I Googled it. I started out using the keywords you used in your post, and when I couldn’t find anything, I tried “Mora” and different two-word titles including the word “cove”. I tried “hidden cove”, “seventh cove”, and based on your description, I finally hit it with “haunted cove”.
Oh, and thanks, Kolak, for the further Rick Brant info. I was hoping to find if anyone else had read them, but that site has some interesting info. I liked the comparison between Rick Brant and Jonny Quest, especially.
Glad to help. It really is a pretty cool site. I’d never heard of the Rick Brant books, but they seem interesting and considering the collection I have of other series I might as well check this one out. I already ordered a couple of the reprints just to get an idea of what they are like.
I distinctly recall that “sehr gut” (German for very good) figured in one of the Alvin Fernald books. Alvin’s little sister (can’t recall her name) thought that everyone was talking about a girl named Sarah Goot. I don’t remember the rest of the details of that book, but –
The part about a family dumping many ingredients and cooking (but the result was a purple goo, did they feed it to the cat?) is definitely from “While Mrs. Coverlet Was Away” which was part of a series involving a housekeeper (Mrs. Coverlet) and the family of kids she takes care of, the youngest having the name of Toad.
The one I can’t remember is not a series; I think it’s just one book. It involved two guys. The main character I can’t think of his name, but his friend was Joey Gooch. The only part of the book I remember is that they were ironing a shirt and the main guy irons over Joey’s finger. Ring any bells with anyone?
Oh, my god…is that the one where Toad sends away for a voodoo kit and makes the replacement housekeeper take to her bed for a week?
Alvin’s sister’s name was Daphne. AKA “The Pest”. And Alvin and Daphne and his best friend (Stewie???) did make a candy by mixing a bunch o’foodstuffs and cooking it. The results were called “Fireballs.”
Wow, this thread is bringing me back. I loved so many of these books, Three Investigators, Henry Reed, Tom Swift, Great Brain, Danny Dunn, Mad Scientists Club. At the time I was reading these, I had no idea they’d been published long before I was born.
I admit, though, even as a kid, I thought, “Gee, Henry Reed and Midge Glass spend a lot of time together, and yet there never seems to be any tension at all.”
Also, the Three Investigators never, ever mention a girl. You’d think one of them would. Except for Ally (?) who appears in a couple of books, but they seem to dislike her rather intensely.
I dunno. Thanks to the OP for brining back some great memories.