The Adventure and Mystery Series for Girls by A.L. Burt

    Several years ago I came across a listing for the book The Black Box by Thelma Lientz and wanted to look it up before purchasing it. At the time there wasn't any information I could find on it and no other copies for sale. After doing some intense googling I found a link that led me to some information about the series this book was apart of. The link didn't take me to an actual site, but something like the data remains of an old site. The text was all jumbled together amide a giant wall of other text and html.

    I copied the text, pasted it into a notebook .txt file, and sorted it out right. This .txt file has been an invaluable guide for this series as well as the series' it was divided into. I'm sure without it I could have figured it out myself through purchasing books in the series' and monitoring eBay listings but that would have taken time and money (also who knows if I would have ever figured out that The Phantom Town and The Phantom Town Mystery, both by Carol Norton, are two separate books). This file also made it possible for me to create a series listing on goodreads which has helped others. 

    As I said I found this years ago and I'm not surprised that the data remains of the site seem to be gone now, at least I couldn't find it. It seems to only exist in my file now so I thought I would post it since I found it so helpful.

    I want to be very clear, everything below this is not mine. I did not write it and I am not trying to take credit for it. If the original creator is brought to my attention I will, of course, credit them properly.

    The Adventure and Mystery Series for Girls is an A. L. Burt publishers series consisting of 18 titles.

• Meg of Mystery Mountain
• Nan of the Gypsies
• Rilla of the Lighthouse
• Bobs, a Girl Detective
• The Phantom Treasure
• The Phantom Yacht
• The Secret of Steeple Rocks
• The Seven Sleuths' Club
• Sisters
• The Black Box
• The Mystery of the Sandalwood Boxes
• The Strange Likeness
• Kay and the Secret Code
• The S. P. Mystery
• Finding the Lost Treasure
• The Phantom Town
• The Phantom Town Mystery
• The Mystery of Arnold Hall

    There are only two books in the entire series which feature the same characters (Phantom Town and Phantom Town Mystery). All in all these are pretty good stories and a good series to collect. The original Burt editions are rather scarce and hard to find, especially with dust jackets. However Saalfield reprinted all but one of these books and they are fairly common. The Burt editions have nice colorful dust jackets, an illustrated cover, and a glossy frontispiece, all using the same picture. The Saalfield edtions were more cheaply made using lower quality paper. Some had the same dust jacket and cover as the Burt editions but they also produced their own simpler designs for many of the books, these edition have plain covers and a plain paper frontispiece. 

    Saalfield did not reprint these as the Adventure and Mystery Series for Girls but instead created six additional series each containing three of the books. There seems to be no particular logic as to how these sub-series were put together. The two books which do have recurring characters were not even put in the same series. Each small series was produced with a newly designed jacket, each jacket common to all three titles. Some of these may have been issued as box sets, but I am not sure. The Saalfield seires are:

Girls' Adventure Series (all written by Grace May North):

1. Meg of Mystery Mountain
2. Rilla of the Lighthouse
3. Nan of the Gypsies

Thrilling Adventure Series

1. The Valdmere Mystery (by Milton Richards)
2. The Mystery of the Sandalwood Boxes (by Harriet Pyne Grove)
3. Bobs, A Girl Detective (by Carol Norton)

The Phantom Series

1. The Phantom Town Mystery (by Carol Norton)
2. The Phantom Treasure (by Harriet Pyne Grove)
3. The Black Box (by Thelma Lientz)

The Lost Treasure Series

1. The Phantom Yacht (by Carol Norton)
2. The Phantom Town (by Carol Norton)
3. Finding the Lost Treasure (by Helen M. Persons)

Girls' Mystery Series (all by Harriet Pyne Grove)

1. The Secret of Steeple Rocks
2. The S. P. Mystery
3. The Strange Likeness

Girls' Detective Series

1. Seven Sleuths Club (by Carol Norton)
2. Sisters (by Grace May North)
3. The Mystery at Arnold Hall (by Helen M. Persons)

    I don't think there is an official list of these books, I have listed/numbered them by copyright date and then alphabetically. An oddity with the Saalfield editions is that Kay and the Secret Code was not reprinted. Instead The Valdmere Mystery was included as part of the Thrilling Adventure series. The Valdmere Mystery was published by Burt as part of the Adventure and Mystery Series for Boys (another good series with even more titles). Just to be complete I added it to the bottom of this page.

    From the advertising it would seem that this was originally intended to be a shorter series. A summary from one of the early Burt editons says "Written by two well-known authors of books for girls, the stories in this splendid new series are filled with the lively adventures of many bright, interesting girls, the exciting incidents in their lives, and the fun and good times they have while solving bewildering, puzzling mysteries. Curious and thrilling events add enchantment to these stories for girls of High School age." Of course there ended up being more than two authors. A later title had this summary, "Each book in this new series deals with the adventures of lively, interesting girls, the exciting moments in their lives and the fun and thrills they have in unraveling baffling mysteries. They are spirited, wholesome tales, portraying many tense and dramatic events in a most realistic manner." There ended up being a total of five authors Grace May North (four titles), Carol Norton (five titles), Harriet Pyne Grove (five titles), Thelma Lientz (two titles), Helen M. Persons (two titles). And if the Valdmere title is included, Milton Richards. Grace May North and Carol Norton are the same person, more formally known as Mrs. William Nelson Monfort. She also wrote the Adele Doring and Virginia Davis series. I think anyone who likes to read series books would enjoy reading these, of course some are better than others. I personally think the ones by Ms North/Norton are some of the best. The ones by Thelma Lientz have some rather strange and hard to believe plots.