Stella, eleven, gets her dreamed-of adventure when something she should not have seen in the damp, dull hotel where she lives with three dreadful aunts on a cliff above Withering-by-Sea sends her on the run from stage magician Professor Starke and his thugs, eluding danger, making new friends, and facing questions about herself.
Ten-year-old Felicity's existence in a dreadful eighteenth-century orphanage, owned and run for profit by Parson Grout, is changed forever when the Parson steals a sturdy wooden cupboard believing it to be magical.
This time fourteen-year-old J.D. is looking for the family of the contributor of his dad's large intestines, and the search leads him to Florida, and his "cousin" Gloria, bodyguard of the Vampire--but when she is wounded protecting J.D. from Frankenstein's daughter, he finds himself obliged to protect the Vampire from the Invisible Man.
"A drought has settled in the area around the orphanage where Boniface lives. There are long line-ups at the tiny spring where all the local people get their water, and suddenly the orphans are pushed to the back of the line, unwelcome. Boniface's houseparent, Henry, tells him that the people were mean out of fear--they feared there would not be enough water for their families. When the building of the orphanage's well is completed, Boniface has an idea to help the villagers"--Amazon.com.
Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny become trapped in a cabin by an unexpected snowstorm, which turns into an even greater adventure when they help their neighbors, a baker and his family, recover an old family secret.
Philippa, Sam, Thomas, and Max, orphans with extraordinary abilities, must find out who stole a valuable artifact--an Amazonian shrunken head--in order to save their home, Dumfrey's Dime Museum of Freaks, Oddities, and Wonders.
In early 1940s Poland, ten-year-old Felix and his friend Zelda escape from a cattle car headed to the Nazi death camps and struggle to survive, first on their own and then with Genia, a farmer with her own reasons for hating Germans.
Twelve-year-old genius and outsider Willow Chance must figure out how to connect with other people and find a surrogate family for herself after her parents are killed in a car accident.
