Gilda Joyce Psychic Investigator by Jennifer Allison

I loved this book! At the beginning, Gilda Joyce is studying a battered paperback book she found at a garage sale, The Master Psychic's Handbook: A Guide to Psychic Principles and Methods. She wants to be a professional psychic investigator, and spends all of her time wearing disguises and secretly observing human behavior. After boasting at school that she will be spending the summer in San Francisco, she remembers that she has distant relatives there. Her mother forbids it, but she writes a letter to them inviting herself for a visit. In the letter she claims her mother told her, "A young lady with your talents isn't meant to spend the summer wiping drool from the mouth of a big, dull lug of a boy (her brother, who is a perfectly normal intelligent boy)." She doesn't know that she has a cousin there who's the same age she is who just got hurt falling down the stairs when she thought she saw her dead aunt. The old mansion they live in is haunted, possibly by the ghost of the cousin's aunt who committed suicide years before, which is the perfect situation for Gilda to practice her psychic skills. This book is suspenseful, funny and sad. Review by Stacy Church