Orphaned British teenager Scarlett Wakefield postpones her romance with the handsome son of the school groundskeeper in order to travel to Scotland with her American sidekick, Taylor, in search of clues to the murder of a boy who dropped dead after kissing Scarlett.
Examines the history of the Children's Aid Society, the organization that sponsored the orphan train program through which an estimated 200,000 orphans found homes in the years between 1854 and 1929, and presents the stories of nine participants in the program.
The reader chooses the course of the action in a story about homeless children who were sent on trains from New York City in the early 1900s to find adoptive families in the West.
Quint finally begins his training at the Knights Academy, Maris adjusts to life in Undertown, and Sanctaphrax shivers in anticipation of a legendary storm, while a storm of a different kind brews between sky-scholars and earth-scholars.
Fleeing from the ruins of New Undertown, Rook Barkwater and the librarian knights and Felix Lodd and his banderbear friends must lead the escaping population to a new life in the Free Glades.
A second prophesy, this time involving dolphins, comes true for eleven-year-old Martine, an orphaned South African girl who has mystical powers over animals, when she embarks on a school trip to study marine life off the coast of Mozambique.
