I ran into the Dana Girl mysteries almost twenty years ago while browsing in a small library in Michigan with my daughter. We both truly enjoyed the series. However, one does not find them at the used bookstores very often. The Dana Girl mysteries were written in the 1930s by the same syndicate which wrote Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys, but the Dana Girls never caught on as well as the other two series.

In the series, Louise and Jean, sisters who have been adopted by their uncle and who are now in a boarding school, go about solving mysteries similar to Nancy Drew. However, the writers apparently did not like writing this series because they felt that they were limited by the fact that the girls were in boarding school. The girls' uncle is doing well for himself as a captain of a ship, and is well enough off to send the girls to a good school. Such was not the case for many families in the 1930s.

In this book, 'The Secret at Lone Tree Cottage,' the girls work to find their English teacher who has been kidnapped and is being held for ransom. They enlist the aid of both their headmistress and their uncle to find their teacher and solve the mystery. I found this story both delightful and entertaining, though it is a bit dated, as are many children's' mysteries written in this era. ( )