Gilda Joyce, Psychic Investigator

Allison's debut novel introduces a spunky, appealingly eccentric 13-year-old who identifies with Harriet the Spy and may well rival her for readers' affections. Gilda's current ""career"" encompasses three activities: writing novels, spying on neighbors and developing her psychic abilities. She focuses primarily on the last-mentioned pursuit when she finagles an invitation to San Francisco to visit her mother's second cousin, Lester Splinter, whom she has never met, and then discovers he has a daughter Gilda's age named Juliet. A brooding loner, Juliet lives with her aloof, divorced father in a Victorian mansion, a house that, Gilda is convinced, ""has a secret to reveal."" After learning that Juliet's aunt jumped to her death from the top of the estate's tower-and that Juliet has encountered what appears to be her aunt's ghost inside the house-Gilda is determined to communicate with the dead woman and to uncover the details surrounding the tragedy. Those who pick up the book for the mystery angle must be patient; it does not begin in earnest until roughly a third into the novel. But even more compelling is the story of the friendship that develops between Juliet and Gilda, whose alternating perspectives give readers insights ahead of the girls. And perhaps most affecting of all are Gilda's earnest attempts to commune with her much-missed father, who died of cancer two years earlier. Ages 10-up.