When Stevie Bell, an amateur detective, begins her first year at a famous private school in Vermont, she sets a plan to solve the cold case involving the kidnapping of the founder's wife and daughter shortly after the school opened. Ellingham Academy was founded by Albert Ellingham, who wanted to make a wonderful place full of riddles, twisting pathways, and gardens. Shortly after the school opened, his wife and daughter were kidnapped. The only...

Ellingham Academy must be cursed. Three people are now dead. One a victim of either a prank gone wrong or a murder. Another dead by misadventure. And now, an accident in Burlington has claimed another life. All at the exact moment of Stevie's greatest triumph. She knows who Truly Devious is. She's solved it. The greatest case of the century. At least, she thinks she has. With this latest tragedy, it's hard to concentrate on the past. Not only has...

When Stevie Bell is finally able to return to Ellingham Academy after identifying the culprit in the murder of a classmate, she begins to wonder if the case was really resolved and attempts to uncover the truth about the school's founder. Stevie Bell seemed to be on the cusp of the decades-old kidnapping and murder of Albert Ellingham's family. But a classmate's murder-- which Stevie solved-- convinced her parents to pull her out of Ellingham Academy....