During a field trip in the local woods, Roni and Brian find the local archaeology professor, Andrew Dart, knocked unconscious in a cave, which leads them to investigate a land development scheme.
Rescued from the gallows in 1850s London, young orphan and thief Mary Quinn is offered a place at Miss Scrimshaw's Academy for Girls where she is trained to be part of an all-female investigative unit called The Agency and, at age seventeen, she infiltrates a rich merchant's home in hopes of tracing his missing cargo ships.
In Farmington, Massachusetts, in 1839, nine-year-old Ethan experiences hardships as an indentured servant of the wealthy Lyman family alongside Daniel, a boy scorned simply for being Irish, and the boys bond as they try to right a terrible wrong.
A talking cat, intelligent rats, and a strange boy cooperate in a Pied Piper scam until they try to con the wrong town and are confronted by a deadly evil rat king.
After her mother's death and her father's suicide, fourteen-year-old Teddi finds some stability when she moves in with Mamie, her good-hearted next door neighbor--until the arrival of a woman claiming to be the pregnant wife of Mamie's son who recently died in a plane crash.
Klooz, trying to stop a group of crooks who are putting out a violent computer game, has to use old-fashioned investigating techniques when he is forced offline.
While celebrating his eleventh birthday with his mother and his friend Olga, Klooz relates the case that started his detective career, which involved magic balls, and a boy named Snake who was his best friend.
"The eventually internationally recognized writer Lily Blennerhassett" spends her thirteenth summer missing her best friend and keeping a journal of her boring life at home and exciting newly-discovered relatives.
