Nine-year-old Phillip has always lived with his grandmother, but when his widowed father remarries he finds that he must suddenly adjust to a new way of life with his father and stepmother.
A family's visit to a country under the rule of a dictator involves the children in a startling revolutionary secret and leads them to suspect that their stepfather is a spy.
In 2040, eleven-year-old Tom follows his grandfather through the Wall and into the forbidden Wild, where they seek to find his grandfather's boyhood home.
Thirteen-year-old Jane, whose quiet life with her two aunts is interrupted by sporadic visits from her seafaring father, tries to learn more about her half brother and sister after discovering that her father remarried ten years ago.
When eight-year-old Cora is sent to stay next door with the seemingly pleasant woman called Aunt Sunday, she is tormented by Aunt Sunday's mean-spirited, deceitful daughter, but finds an ally in Aunt Sunday's elderly mother.
Thirteen-year-old Plato Jones tries to come to terms with his mixed heritage while visiting Greece, as he finds out more about his Welsh grandfather, a World War II hero, and his Greek grandfather, a supposed traitor.
