In the 1890s, struggling to support himself and his invalid father among the gangs on New York's Lower East Side, thirteen-year-old Sam Glodsky joins mobster Monk Eastman and his own archenemy, Izzy Fink, in a plot to rescue Eastman's prize racing pigeon from a quarantined steamship.

Thorston, an alchemist who has spent his life trying to decipher the secret to immortality contained in the Book Without Words, is on the brink of realizing his dream when he drops dead, leaving Odo, a talking raven, and Sybil, a servant who was about to be sacrificed to Thorston's plan, to reap the rewards of his work.

An elderly slave uses the power of his mind to ease the suffering of other slaves and eventually leads them back to Africa.

In the absence of his older brother, the Great Brain, J.D. finds that his own little brain can accomplish feats on a somewhat lesser scale.

In the early 1900s, little Sap, a young girl from the rice fields of Cambodia, wins a coveted place in the royal dance troupe and learns the steps so well that she is noticed by the famous artist Auguste Rodin, who rewards her with a special prize. A foreword and an author's note give additional information about the history of Cambodia, Khmer dance, and August Rodin.

In the 1840s, Dr. Asa B. Cornwall, a phrenologist, and his fourteen-year-old assistant, Matthew Morrissey, travel from Paris to Northern Africa to seek the missing skull of Alexander the Great.

When the influenza epidemic of 1918 comes to Vermont, eleven-year-old Margaret, who has always wanted to be a physician, finds out what doctoring is like.

Thirteen-year-old Bella tries to keep the tradition of lectors going in her Cuban-American community when workers clash with the owners of the cigar factory putting the jobs of lectors in jeopardy.

Falsely accused of plotting to overthrow King Claudio, scholarly Mangus the magician, along with his street-smart servant boy, Fabrizio, face deadly consequences unless they can track down the real traitor by the stroke of midnight.

Presents an historical fiction written in first-person format that follows Emma, the slave of Pierce Butler, through a series of events in her life as her master hosts the largest slave auction in American history in Savannah, Georgia in 1859 in order to pay off his mounting gambling debts.