The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle by Avi
A girl named Charlotte goes on a ship voyage alone, and the crew is very rough and are not "proper." When a crew member dies from an accident during a storm, Charlotte gets charged with murder and convicted. The rest of the story tells how she gets out of this predicament and comes out on top. There are a lot of plot twists so you can never tell what will happen next. It's a really fun story and once I started reading it, I could not put it down.
By Abby Anderson, age 10