Eleven-year-old Martha tries to keep her family together after her mother's death as her father struggles with alcoholism.

After a brush with the law, Ben, a dyed-in-the-wool worrier, must take up a new hobby and chooses knitting, an activity at which he excels but must try to keep secret from his friends, enemies, and sports-obsessed father.

After a long pestering campaign, nine-year-old Anna and her younger brother Tom finally get a pair of hamsters, but when the pets are found mysteriously dead, the siblings and neighbor Suzanne launch an investigation throughout their neighborhood.

Sequel to: The great cat conspiracy and The great hamster massacre. Suzanne is delighted when her Great-Aunt Deidra leaves her Newfoundland, Beatrice, to Suzanne's mother, but Beatrice is old, slow, and has serious stomach issues which Suzanne and Anna must try to fix before Dad sends another dog away.

When sixteen-year-old Jess Tennant's mother takes her to spend the summer in the tiny English town where she grew up, people look at Jess as if they have seen a ghost due to her resemblance to her cousin Freya, who died shortly before Jess arrived and to whom Jess feels a strange connection.

Eleven-year-old Theodosia's ability to detect black magic raises her suspicions about a magician known as the Great Awi Bubu, while Henry, home for the spring holidays, discovers an artifact at the Museum of Legends and Antiquities that is coveted by every black-cloaked occultist in London.