When she, her sister Rose, and her parents come to live in her grandmother's old country house, eight-year-old Emily draws them all into her efforts to find youngest of a neglected family of dolls.
Maia and her brother Sethnet are orphaned and sent to live with their cruel aunt and uncle in ancient Thebes; and when Maia pleads with Sethnet, who is studying to be a scribe, to teach her to write, it becomes the one thing that will save her life.
In 1349, a young girl returns from months of surviving in the marsh, having been "outlawed" for offending the village lord, only to find that her village has been wiped out by "the sickness.".
Papa's statement that he would like to have Mrs. Hedgehog for breakfast leads George and Charles to try to cook her in their kitchen, but their guest does not seem to realize that they intend her for the main course.
Itching to do something different, eighteen-year-old Sarah leaves Maine for the harsh Montana environment as a mail-order bride, and is soon left a widow with a 2000-acre ranch to run.
In 1874 eleven-year-old Sam and his family move from Kentucky to the southern Dakota Territory, where harsh conditions and a plague of hungry grasshoppers threaten their chances for survival.
When ten-year-old Maddy Trevor goes for her annual summer visit to her grandfathers and her cat Sabrina disappears, she searches the woods and discovers a magical world.
