Zilpha Keatley Snyder

Cats. Jessica's never liked them. Especially not a skinny, ugly kitten that looks like a worm. Worm. Jessica wishes she'd never brought Worm home with her, because now he's making her do terrible things. She's sure she isn't imagining the evil voice coming from the cat, telling her to play mean tricks on people. But how can she explain what's happening? Witches. Jessica has read enough books to know that Worm must be a witch's cat. He's cast a spell...

When eleven-year-old Cat Kinsey builds a secret hideout to escape her unhappy homelife, she slowly gets to know a poor family who have come to California after losing their Texas home to the dust storms of the 1930s.

Life is never quite the same again for eleven-year-old David after the arrival of his new stepsister, a student of the occult.

Having been put ahead in an accelerated eighth grade program by her bizarre and creative family, precocious eleven-year-old Libby hates her "socialization" process, until she makes some highly original friends in a writing workshop.

Having trespassed and explored the empty Hutchinson mansion, which seems haunted by the presence of a long-dead young girl, sixth-grader Neely and her little brother become regular visitors when emotionally disturbed Curtis Hutchinson moves inches.

Reluctant to admit that he suffers from claustrophobia and anxious not to alienate his friends, Rudy tries to find a way to distract them from pursuing their plan of exploring an abandoned gold mine.

Kidnappers in Italy have their hands full when the captive American children advise them on running a better kidnapping and on proper nutrition.

Feeling angry and out-of-place in her large family, twelve-year-old Xandra finds a magical key to a world of ghostly, sometimes frightening, phantoms that help her see herself and her siblings more clearly.

With her father's failing health and the family's shaky finances, twelve-year-old Audrey's dreams of becoming a writer seem very impractical until she is given a peculiar bronze pen that appears to have unusual powers.

Locked in one evening with the vast wealth of the Alcott-Simpson department store, a fourteen-year-old boy meets an unusual girl who hints about the mysterious "they" and tells him of strange goings-on in the building.