At the start of the Klondike gold rush of 1897, while traveling through Canada with her father, uncle and friends, twelve-year-old aspiring author Hetty tries to determine the identity of a thief.

In the aftermath of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, twelve-year-old Clara finds a baby left on the doorstep of her family's boarding house, and sets out to unravel the surrounding mysteries.

In 1958, Mendy puts herself in danger when she discovers that the Ku Klux Klan is planning to bomb the Highlander Folk School in order to disrupt a visit from Mendy's hero, Eleanor Roosevelt.

In 1928, Bessie's father takes her and her brother Eddie from their mother in North Carolina to live with their aunts in Harlem, and then her father mysteriously disappears.

In 1908, eleven-year-old Innie joins the library club at a settlement house that serves immigrant families of Boston's North End, but when items and money disappear from the settlement house, Innie's past as a troublemaker puts her under suspicion.

In 1865, while helping her family keep their Virginia farm going through the end of the Civil War, twelve-year-old Cassie meets a Confederate deserter and a Yankee prisoner of war and tries to discover who has been stealing from the farm.

He chases crooks. She dusts off maps. With important men vanishing, can one key document prevent death? Vancouver, 1897. Jack Winston refuses to let his bloodline decide his vocation. Keeping his family connections secret as he joins the Constabulary, the rising detective works hard to make a name for himself on his own merit. But when he investigates a missing young lawyer, he's shocked to find his own journal connects him to a woman claiming to...