In the prison-like school that is his last chance, thirteen-year-old Robbie tries to recover from events that brought him there, including his uncle's war injuries and the death of a classmate who may have been his friend.
Fourteen-year-old Hal Mitchell, sentenced after his recapture to live at a boys' home called Hellenweiler, tries to stay away from gangs and violence so he can get out in a few months, but his inmates do their best to involve him in trouble.
Suspected in the death of her boyfriend, seventeen-year-old Luce is sent to a Savannah, Georgia, reform school where she meets two intriguing boys and learns the truth about the strange shadows that have always haunted her.
When Cody Mack and the boys uncover an old, forgotten swimming pool hidden below the floor of Splurch Academy's gymnasium they think it may provide them with an escape route, but the pool is overflowing with evil, monstrous squids.
Escaping the Splurch Academy infirmary using stolen keys, Cody Mack and friends prepare for Halloween and try to figure out Cody's dreams about a giant beetle that seems to be turning him into a monster.
When Headmaster Farley's estranged sister takes over Splurch Academy, Cody and the other boys are pitted against their new classmates, the girls of Priscilla Prim Academy for Precious and Proper Young Ladies.
When goth teen Marlo wakes up in Fibble, the part of Heck that is reserved for liars, she is disgusted to find that she is in her younger brother Milton's body.
Eleven-year-old Milton Fauster puts aside his own escape plans to help his sister, Marlo, who is in training to be an underworld secretary, and his best friend, Virgil, who is stuck in the circle of Heck reserved for overweight children.
Formerly dead Milton Fauster tries to save his older sister Marlo from "eternal darnation" when she is sent to another educational level of the Underworld reform school known as Heck.
When timid Milton and his older, scofflaw sister Marlo die in a marshmallow bear explosion at Grizzly Mall, they are sent to Heck, an otherworldly reform school from which they are determined to escape.
