When Ivy and Ray's parents are sent to jail, and left in the custody of their parent's accusers, they decide to look for evidence that will "spring" their parents. When their parents are sent "up the river" for embezzlement, Ray and Ivy are left to live in the lap of luxury with Marietta Noland and her ancient husband, Lionel. But life at the big house is not all it is cracked up to be. First there is the shrouded portrait, then there is the spider...

After unscrupulous collector S. Wendell Palamino cons him out of a valuable baseball card, sixth-grader Griffin Bing puts together a band of misfits to break into Palomino's heavily guarded store and steal the card back, planning to use the money to finance his father's failing invention, the SmartPick fruit picker.

"Desperado Detectives--aka Mo Lo Beau and her best friend Dale, along with newly-appointed intern, Harm Crenshaw--must take on a new case when Dale's daddy goes on the lam just before his trial is about to start,"--

Twelve-year-old Jonathan Grisby has been sent to the Slabhenge Reformatory School for Troubled Boys, a former lunatic asylum which is currently run by a sadist who enjoys punishing the boys and setting them against each other; but when a lightning strike kills all the adults the boys find themselves suddenly free--and trapped on Scar Island which seems to be sinking into the ocean.

Mercy the pig's love of buttered toast leads to the capture of a small thief who would rather be a cowboy.