Margins
Barnes and The Brains book cover 1
Barnes and The Brains book cover 2
Barnes and The Brains book cover 3
Barnes and The Brains
Series · 5 books · 1993-2010

Books in series

A Bad Case of Ghosts book cover
#1

A Bad Case of Ghosts

1993

Giles Barnes and his family have just moved into a very strange house. Creeks, rustles, and fluttering sounds fill his bedroom. His mother says there are no such things as ghosts, but Giles decides to investigate. With help from new friends Tina and Kevin Quark and their ghostometer, the team solves the mystery, and gets rid of the ghosts for good!
A Strange Case Of Magic book cover
#2

A Strange Case Of Magic

1993

When Giles, Tina and Kevin see books moving in the library, all by themselves, they know they have to investigate. But Tina's amazing ghostometer doesn't pick up any ghosts, so what could that mysterious presence be? Nobody expects what they actually find - and once again, it takes a dose of Giles' own common-sense magic to get things back to normal.
A Bad Case of Robots book cover
#3

A Bad Case of Robots

1994

The third title in the "A bad case of..." series, this story features once more Giles and his friends Tina and Kevin Quark, who are always inventing something weird and wonderful. Tina is involved in building a robot for the school science project, but things do not go as she had planned.
An Incredible Case Of Dinosaurs book cover
#4

An Incredible Case Of Dinosaurs

1994

Giles, Tina and Kevin are hired by the rich and eccentric Miss Frost to uncover the mystery of her deep and overgrown swimming pool—and discover not one, but two real live dinosaurs!
A Creepy Case Of Vampires book cover
#6

A Creepy Case Of Vampires

2010

An old church tower has a problem with bats, but when Tina’s homemade Bat Zapper attracts more bats than it repels, the boys take matters into their own hands. Or is it really a vampire they’re up against?

Author

Kenneth Oppel
Kenneth Oppel
Author · 35 books
I was born in 1967 in Port Alberni, a mill town on Vancouver Island, British Columbia but spent the bulk of my childhood in Victoria, B.C. and on the opposite coast, in Halifax, Nova Scotia...At around twelve I decided I wanted to be a writer (this came after deciding I wanted to be a scientist, and then an architect). I started out writing sci-fi epics (my Star Wars phase) then went on to swords and sorcery tales (my Dungeons and Dragons phase) and then, during the summer holiday when I was fourteen, started on a humorous story about a boy addicted to video games (written, of course, during my video game phase). It turned out to be quite a long story, really a short novel, and I rewrote it the next summer. We had a family friend who knew Roald Dahl - one of my favourite authors - and this friend offered to show Dahl my story. I was paralysed with excitement. I never heard back from Roald Dahl directly, but he read my story, and liked it enough to pass on to his own literary agent. I got a letter from them, saying they wanted to take me on, and try to sell my story. And they did.
548 Market St PMB 65688, San Francisco California 94104-5401 USA
© 2025 Paratext Inc. All rights reserved
Barnes and The Brains