While setting up a homeless shelter at the church, Sebastian and his friends, Corrie and David, solve the mystery of a dead man found in an abandoned inn.
Vicious traps and threats beset Frank and Joe as they search for two stolen, famous paintings in an old fort said to be inhabited by a ghost. One of the paintings is a clue to the hiding place of a chain of gold.
Sensible eleven-year-old Mary Rose, constantly at odds with her imaginative seven-year-old sister Jo-Beth, finds that they need to work together when an unplanned visit to a strange shoe museum and house of magic illusions involves them in the disappearance of a Chinese emperor's shoes.