Eleven-year-old Allie is visited by the ghost of a handsome young man and finds herself investigating the fire seventeen years ago that killed him as well as the husband and infant son of a scary cafeteria worker at her school.
Being sent to stay with grandparents he hardly knows is hard enough for twelve-year-old Eric, whose parents are deployed to Iraq, but his grandfather's hostility and the threat of losing the dog he rescues causes Eric to run away.
Jessie, an elderly calligrapher who writes announcements and notices of birth, marriage, and death for the townsfolk, discovers that she has the ability to predict the future in her writings.
Twelve-year-old Lucas Whitaker, orphaned in 1849 when his entire family is claimed by consumption, takes a job as an apprentice with Doc Beecher, and learns the truth about the difference between superstition and science.
While coping with his parents' separation, eleven-year-old Skeet spends most of Spring Break in his skiff on a Florida river, where he finds a manatee shot to death and begins looking for the killer.
Hindered by a fight with her friend Dub and a series of mysterious fires, eleven-year-old Allie investigates the fire seventeen years earlier which claimed the lives of the husband and infant son of a school cafeteria worker, as well as the handsome young man whose ghost asks Allie for help.
Despite a great summer job as first mate on a fishing boat out of Martha's Vineyard, thirteen-year-old Ben gets caught up with illegal drugs and possible murder.
