A video I saw on YouTube reminded me of this made-for-tv movie recently. If you're already starting to get into a fall mood, it's a good, mildly-creepy story with some lovely scenery and fall atmosphere! It's based on the book by L. M. Montgomery, Jane of Lantern Hill (although I don't think the original book had the ghost story element).

Jane lives with her mother in 1930s Canada. Until the age of 12, she believes that her father is dead. When her mother falls ill and they move in with Jane's overbearing grandmother, Jane learns that her father is actually still alive. Her parents aren't divorced, but they haven't lived together for years, and her grandmother's snobbish crowd considers it a scandal. When Jane's father insists that Jane come to stay with him for a time at his old house on Prince Edward Island, Lantern Hill, Jane discovers hidden secrets about her family's past.

Before her father met her mother, he was engaged to another woman. It was considered a scandal when he broke off the engagement to marry Jane's mother. The other woman, Evelyn, died in a mysterious accident, driving her car off a cliff in a snow storm. Locals still whisper about Jane's father's role in the accident. Evelyn's shocking death and interference from members of their respective families drove Jane's parents apart. However, there's more to the story, and Evelyn's ghost has begun appearing to Jane, leading her to the full truth to right past wrongs and help her clean up the emotional mess she left behind.

The ghost story was creepy to me as a child, but there's also touching family drama. Jane visits her father in the fall, leading up to Christmas, so there are people wearing wonderful vintage sweaters and coats, fog, mist, storms, fallen leaves, and pumpkins in the background. You can see a copy of this movie through Internet Archive or buy it through Amazon

I was listening to snughly's video about 8 Nancy Drew books which should be games (and 2 which shouldn't), and I've been considering which books I'd like to see as games. I think there are plenty of books that would make good games, but I'd like to give a shout out to The Secret of Candlelight Inn:

When Bess decides to participate in a program to raise puppies who will be trained to be guide dogs, Nancy and her friends become involved in the secrets of the historic Candlelight Inn, a former inn which was later turned into a private residence and has been left to the Guiding Eyes Foundation, the organization that trains guide dogs, as a new school for the blind. The organization appreciates the use of the house and the money that comes with it as part of the estate, although they’re concerned because the house will need a lot of renovations to make it more suitable for the blind, and they’re not sure if the money from the estate will cover it.

At Candlelight Inn, Nancy and her friends meet Marisa, the former owner’s granddaughter, who is a law student and the executor of her estate. Marisa is blind and uses a guide dog. She explains that she lost her sight to a hereditary condition called retinitus pigmentosa, just as her grandmother did. Marisa’s boyfriend, Devon, is also there. Devon is in college, studying to be an architect, like others in his family.

Then, Marisa gets a frantic call from a friend, Erik, because he’s been arrested for trying to buy something with counterfeit money at the mall! Marisa asks Nancy to call her father, who is a lawyer. It seems like a lot of counterfeit money has been turning up in River Heights recently. Others who have been caught with the counterfeits are Westmore students like Erik and Devon. Eric and Devon are both architecture students and members of the same fraternity. There’s also tension between them Erik used to date Marisa before Devon, and they’re still friends. Carson Drew takes Erik’s case, saying that the police are more suspicious of Erik than other students because his architecture background gives him the skill to draft the counterfeit bills .. but the same could be said of Devon.

However, there was another counterfeiting case in River Heights 25 years before, before Erik, Devon, and the other young characters were born. Details of the past case seem oddly similar to the current situation. The mastermind of the old case was never caught. Is there a connection between the old case and the current one?

As Marisa and Penny, an employee from the Guiding Eyes organization, inspect the Candlelight Inn and discuss the renovations that would be necessary to turn it into a school for the blind, they find a hidden space between the walls. It seems to be the entrance to a secret room! Inside, they find dusty packets of money! The dates on the money are 25 years ago. Nancy immediately suspects that the money is counterfeit, connected to the old counterfeiting case, and she says that they need to call the police.

The police confirm that the money is counterfeit, and the serial numbers match the ones on the counterfeit money that Erik used at the mall. It seems that the Candlelight Inn was the center of operations for the old counterfeiting ring! Was Marisa’s grandmother involved with the counterfeiters? Marisa admits that she doesn’t know much about her grandmother’s past because there was a rift between her and Marisa’s mother. She didn’t even meet her grandmother until after her mother died in an accident a couple of years ago. Her grandmother was a wealthy woman when she died, but she supposedly made her money in the stock market. Could a blind person be a convincing counterfeiter? Who else might have been involved 25 years ago?

Nancy and Marissa begin investigating the history of the Candlelight Inn, before Marisa’s grandmother turned it into a private residence. However, someone tries to scare them into dropping the investigation. They break into Marisa’s apartment and leave threatening messages. Then, someone abducts Marisa’s guide dog! The past crimes of the Candlelight Inn have returned to haunt the present. There is also one more secret at the Candlelight Inn that Marisa’s grandmother left for her with a riddle for a clue.

Benefits of this book as a game:

There are educational aspects of the story because the characters talk about the process of training guide dogs, and there's a lot of information about braille and assistive technologies for the blind, plus everyday techniques that blind people use to help with basic tasks, such as using different types of hangers for different clothes so they know what matches with what and folding the corners of paper money to signal their denominations.

It's also a charming setting, an old inn with secrets, and the book is set in autumn.

There are only 4 main suspects:

• Marisa herself - Could she be trying to claim her grandmother's estate instead of passing it on to the foundation?
• Devon - His father and grandfather turn out to have done some renovation work on the inn in the past, which means they could have built the secret room or at least know about it.
• Erik - He does some volunteer work for the blind and worked for Marisa's grandmother at one point, and he might resort to some dirty tricks to win Marisa back from Devon.
• Penny - Someone's been messing with the financial documentation for Marisa's grandmother's estate. Is Penny really working for the foundation's interests or looting the estate for herself?

When Marnie Was There by Joan G. Robinson is a magical time slip story that's become more popular since Studio Ghibli made a movie version.

A lonely foster girl, Anna, is sent to the countryside by her foster family when she becomes ill. Part of her illness is emotional. Because she is a foster child, Anna feels different from other children and finds it difficult to form relationships with other people. She feels unloved and unloveable and has since it seemed like her birth mother abandoned her with her grandmother when she was little and her grandmother died. Anna's insecurities have resurfaced with a vengeance since she discovered that her foster family has been receiving payments for taking care for her and her foster mother didn't want to talk about it, leaving Anna doubting whether her foster parents really love her.

However, when Anna sees a mysterious old house that seems strangely familiar to her, she meets a strange girl named Marnie. Marnie is odd, but Anna feels drawn to her, and the two of them bond, although Marnie has a strange way of disappearing from time to time. At first, Marnie seems to have everything, living in a big house with servants, where her parents give parties, but Anna soon learns that Marnie is neglected by her parents. Most of the time, they leave her alone with the servants, who bully her and scare her by threatening to lock her up in a nearby windmill. For the first time, Anna really feels like she has made a friend, and she confides her worries in her. Marnie reassures Anna that she loves her, making her feel truly accepted.

Anna and Marnie have a falling out when Marnie tries going to the windmill to conquer her fears of the place and seems to leave Anna there alone. They make up before Marnie is suddenly and mysteriously sent away, but the new inhabitants of the house help Anna to learn the secrets of her life and who Marnie really was. Anna also learns the secrets of her own past and how she came to be a foster child. Anna comes to realize that her birth family, even though it had its problems, loved her as best they could, for as long as they could, and that it's all right to accept the love of her foster family.

Clevenger House is an old, stone cottage built into a rocky hillside in Arizona. The Clevengers, a family of five who lived in the house, were homesteaders in the early 1900s. It has only three rooms: two bedrooms (the wall of the back bedroom is natural rock) and a family room with a fireplace.

In the 1920s, William Boyce Thompson bought the house and the surrounding area. For a while, his grandchildren used the cottage as a playhouse, but it's now a part of the Boyce Thompson Arboretum. The arboretum maintains a garden of desert plants and herbs around the house, and they sometimes use the house for drying herbs.

The Children of Noisy Village by Astrid Lindgren, 1947.

Everyone knows Astrid Lindgren for her Pippi Longstocking books, but she also wrote other books for kids. This book is about the children who live on a small collection of farms known as "Noisy Village" because of all the children running around. The book is full of the children's slice-of-life adventures through the year. The story is told from the point-of-view of nine-year-old Lisa, a Swedish girl who has two older brothers, Karl and Bill. Their friends live on the other two farms nearby.

When Lisa was younger, she used to share a room with her brothers before getting a room of her own. At night, Karl used to tell ghost stories, while Bill likes to talk about adventures. Lisa tells a story about how her brothers scared her one night with a ghost story and how they rigged up a trick to make it look like their room was haunted. Now, she has a room of her own because her grandmother, who used to live with them, has gone to live with her aunt. Although Lisa sometimes misses the stories that her brothers used to tell her at night, she’s also relieved that she has a space of her own so she doesn’t have to put up with their pranks or them bossing her around all the time.

Some of the children at Noisy Village have pets, and Lisa explains how Ulaf got his dog, Skip, from the mean shoemaker, who was mistreating him. The children like to play games of pretend on their way home from school, which makes their mothers wonder what they’re doing and sometimes get them into trouble. Anna and Lisa accidentally get on people’s nerves one time when they try too hard to follow their teacher’s advice about doing things to make people happy.

The people of Noisy Village have a charming, old-fashioned Christmas. At a Christmas party at a relative’s house, they play old-fashioned party games and tell stories. The children are allowed to stay up late on New Year’s Eve. The boys scare the girls with some firecrackers, and Britta and Anna’s grandfather teaches the children the tradition of pouring melted lead into water to see what shapes it will form to predict what will happen in the new year. On Easter, the children paint eggs and make egg nog. Eventually, school lets out for summer vacation. The children go swimming and catch crayfish during the summer. When they go fishing for crayfish, they camp out in the forest, near the lake, with Lisa’s father and the other men. The children make little huts to camp in. The boys try to scare the girls with stories about goblins. The children appreciate their idyllic lives in Noisy Village!

In the Garden with Dr. Carver by Susan Grigsby

This picture book is about George Washington Carver, as told by a young African American girl named Sally.

The first time Sally sees him is when he’s traveling with his wagon, pulled by a mule. Sally knows that Dr. Carver is a famous plant scientist from Tuskagee and that he uses his wagon as a kind of mobile school. It contains seeds, plants, and gardening tools, and people come to Dr. Carver for advice about growing plants. The nutrients in the soil of this area have been depleted by growing cotton, and Dr. Carver has been advising them about how to restore the soil. He also advises them about new ways to use common crops.

Dr. Carver visits Sally’s school to help the children with their garden. He teaches them how to use observation to notice the conditions that benefits plants and figure out how to help plants that aren’t doing well. He also shows them how to use things people might otherwise throw away for fertilizer and compost and how to make scrap materials into plant markers and a scarecrow. Before he leaves to return to Tuskagee, the class has a picnic where they eat things they have grown.

There is a section at the back of the book that explains that Sally and her school are fictional, but George Washington Carver was a real person and the story is based around his life and writings. He really did travel around to small towns with his mobile school during the early 20th century, like a kind of gardening bookmobile.

Amazing store and owner, in Mesa, AZ