My sisters are looking for some new books to read.  They are 12 and 14, but do not want all the romancy stuff.  They REALLY liked the Forbidden Doors series by Bill Myers.  So I think we are looking for either mystery or adventure.  I used to read Lee Roddy, but I can't remember which age group that was for.  Does anyone have some recommendations.  I showed them some of Ted Dekker's books, but they don't want a lot of murder.

Frank Peretti's Cooper Kids adventures (they're teens, not kids though)

Patricia Rushford's Jennie McGrady mystery series

And this isn't Christian fiction but The Agency Series by Y.S. Lee is a really good YA mystery series set in Victorian England. It's clean and the mysteries are really good.

I read the Jennie McGrady series as a pre-teen and young teen, and reread some recently.  Almost every book Jennie is interested in a new guy and kisses him.  Although it's necessarily bad, we are trying to stay away from books that's don't show any consequences for giving part of your heart away.  Hopefully I don't sound like a religious freak, there's just SO much boyfriend/girlfriend stuff that is starting as early as kindergarden and first grade now.

I'll look into the others.  I hadn't heard of the Agency Series.  It sounds interesting.

One series I remember as being fun to read when I was that age was the Live from Brentwood High books by Judy Baer.  There's only 6 of them, but they had a little bit of a mystery flair to them, so those might work for your sisters.  :o)

Christa,

I am with you on all that. My younger sisters have read the Mandie series(there is a little bit of boyfriend/girlfriend but that I remember there was no kissing), and the Jannette Oke Love Comes Softly is another series they read. It is about a family and my 13 year old loves them. Basically there's a lot of book about this family going west and they marry and then it is about their children. The later ones we kind of skipped but the first 3 or 4 were really good. And other than that, they liked to read Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden. I know they aren't Christian but many times they were cleaner than the Christian things. Mystery is all there and the romance is minimal. Hope this helps. We got sick of reading Christian books for kids that had more romance and boyfriends, breaking up, kissing,etc. My sisters love horses so we tried the Lauraine Snelling High Hurdle Series and there was too much boyfriend stuff there as well. Tried the Left Behind kids series too:)

As a child I liked read Phyllis Whitley books.  Most people are familar with her adult mysteries but do not realize she wrote a series of juvenile mystery books.  She died a couple of years ago and was well past 100 years old.  Here is a listing of her books:

http://www.phyllisawhitney.com/juvenilemysterylist.htm

Another good one may be The Bobsey Twin mysteries.