Mary Chase Knihy

Imagine how shocked you would be if, like ten-year-old Colin Mason, you were the oldest (smartest, best) kid in a family of four, and then you found out that all these years, without knowing it, you’ve had an older sister, an “awful, awful, bad, bad, girl—Loretta Mason Potts.” Who? What? Wait! ... But this is only the first of many surprises that lie in store for Colin, as things get curiouser and curiouser very fast. Loretta (a glum gangly girl and so very very rude!) comes home and before you know it, Colin is secretly following her down a hidden tunnel that leads from a bedroom closet to an astonishing castle, where a charming and beautiful countess keeps court attended by a dapper and ever-obliging general, and in this world everybody loves Loretta (especially when she’s rude), so much so that they’re begging her to stay with them forever. What is the secret behind this mysterious other world and how does it connect to the many secrets in the Mason family? It’ll take a spellbinding, hair-raising adventure, involving not just Colin and Loretta but their mother and the rest of the family, to work that out.

When Elwood P. Dowd starts to introduce his imaginary friend Harvey, a six and a half foot rabbit, to guests at a dinner party, his sister, Veta, has seen as much of his eccentric behavior as she can tolerate. She decides to have him committed to a sanitarium to spare her daughter, Myrtle Mae, and their family from future embarrassment. Problems arise, however, when Veta herself is mistakenly assumed to be on the fringe of lunacy when she explains to doctors that years of living with Elmwood's hallucination have caused her to see Harvey also! The doctors commit Veta instead of Elwood, but when the truth comes out, the search is on for Elwood and his invisible companion. When he shows up at the sanitarium looking for his lost friend Harvey it seems that the mild-mannered Elwood's delusion has had a strange influence on more than one of the doctors. Only at the end does Veta realize that maybe Harvey isn't so bad after all.