Her books are works of art you can either spend time picking the levels and relationships of events and people apart...or just enjoy the gestalt. In this near-sequel to The Outcasts of 19 Schyuler Place, Amadeo Kaplan and his mother move from New York to St Malo, Florida. It's his first time being "the new kid" and he's smart and rich, so he doesn't make many friends right off the bat. He does befriend William whose mother is helping to catalog the possessions of the strange and pretentious Mrs. Zender, a retired opera singer who is moving to a retirement community before her money runs out. Amadeo wants to discover something no one else has, and there's a chance of that, he thinks, in helping William and his mother with Mrs. Zender's belongings. Through bits of memoir and letters, the boys uncover a mystery that touches on art history and Nazi oppression.
Maybe I just had a weird childhood, but no matter whether her books are set in the modern world or before I was born or back in the mists of history, reading Konigsburg puts me in mind of my own childhood. Her one-of-a-kind Newbery win (Mixed up Files) and Newbery honor (Jennifer, Hecate, MacBeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth) in the same year happened the year I was born--maybe that's the root of my connection to her books. Give them a try; you're in for a treat.