A plan to restore a guillotine and other strange toys once belonging to an eccentric millionaire fills his twelve-year-old great-great-grandson with nameless dread and concern for his family's safety.
Unhappy about his baby sister's illness and the chaos of moving into a dilapidated old house, Michael retreats to the garage and finds a mysterious stranger who is something like a bird and something like an angel.
After the disappearance of his brother Adam, thirteen-year-old Bryan faces a shadowy, centuries-old evil presence known as the Dark Man that, taking the form of its victims' worst fears, stalks the town's children.
Fourteen-year-old Stephanie runs away from her dreary industrial Pennsylvania town to be a model in New York. Instead she meets an expensively-dressed man who puts her to work for him as a prostitute.
In sixth-century Great Britain, a fifteen-year-old girl seeking knowledge of her lineage is drawn into battle to defend the homeland she never knew, aided by one of King Arthur's knights.
Sixteen-year-old Kara Fischer battles cystic fibrosis as she learns to live one day at a time from her friend, Vince, who also has cystic fibrosis; develops feelings for Eric; and receives a wish that she may not live to see granted from an anonymous benefactor.
When left to take care of himself, a young boy becomes involved with a community of intelligent lizards who tell him of a little known invasion from outer space.
Through a series of family disagreements over her seven-year-old brother's efforts to become a dancer and her own determination to be a lawyer, eleven-year-old Emma realizes that it is up to children to take the initiative since parents rarely change.
