Orphaned brothers Prosper and Bo, having run away from their cruel aunt and uncle, decide to hide out in Venice where they fall in with the Thief Lord, a thirteen-year-old boy who leads a crime ring of street children.
Angry at his family for giving his baby sister preferential treatment, seven-year-old Jonathan plans how he will worry everyone by running away--before he goes inside for supper.
Having run away with her younger brother to live in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, twelve-year-old Claudia strives to keep things in order in their new home and to become a changed person and a heroine to herself.
Tom Sawyer, a spirited boy growing up in a Mississippi River town in the nineteenth century, has many adventures, including witnessing a murder, running away to an island and pretending to be a pirate, watching his own funeral, and falling in love.
Recent high school graduates Lil and Josh leave Illinois for Oregon seeking Lil's sort-of friend Penny, who faked her own kidnapping to escape problems at home and an abusive boyfriend, but Lil also wants to find out if she and Josh are meant to be more than friends.
The family of sixteen-year-old Nouf calls upon desert guide Nayir ash-Sharqi to investigate her disappearance; however, when her body is found in the desert and it is determined she died from drowning, Nayir teams up with lab worker Katya Hijazi to find out what really happened.