REBEL

Amanda Jane has been called Rebel since she was two. At 14 (and nearly six feet tall), she’s delighted to spend part of her summer in Seattle helping her unconventional Gram ready an old Victorian house for college-age boarders. Gram’s friend and partner in homesteading is Vi, who has brought along her grandson. He’s not only Rebel’s age, he’s 6 foot 6 and named Moses. Moses’s video camera captures a robbery-in-progress at the local deli, and that sparks a series of events involving counterfeit money and Moses’s Irish wolfhound. Showing the rooms between bouts of housepainting enables Rebel and Moses to trace who the perps might be, and Rebel’s independent streak keeps the more sensible Moses from calling the police until it is almost too late. Rebel is clearly checking Moses out in a big way, and their byplay is rather more interesting than the contrived plotline. The possibility of a European tour with both grandmothers and the teen duo leave readers open for sequels. (Fiction. 10-13)