Emily Luccock is looking forward to living at Sugar Hill Hall....She remembers her aunt and uncle's grand old mansion well, with its enormous, elegant parlor, marble fireplace, and white china cups filled with hot chocolate. But this time things are different. Her aunt's once bright and lively home is now dead with silence. Evil lurks in every corner, and the dark, shadowed walls watch and whisper late at night. And no one ever speaks. Everything's changed at Sugar Hill Hall, and Emily knows something awful is happening there. What's become of Uncle Twice? Why is Aunt Twice a prisoner in her own home? Emily is desperate to uncover the truth. Time is running out, and she must find a way to save the people and home she cares so much about.

One flight up the narrow, steep stairs, Robin finds himself swallowed up by the darkness, terrified and hating the thought of the misery and fear his knock will bring to the wretched families who huddle behind every door in the building.Thus begins the story set in a grim tenement district of New York City before the turn of the twentieth century. It is there that Robin, once protected by a loving mother and father, both now dead, must contend with a brutal stepfather, Hawker Doak. Yet Robin is faced with only two choices: remain in the ruthless charge of Hawker, collecting the hated rents, and, perhaps worse, being sent to work in a factory or escape into the treacherous slum streets, haunted by, among other horrors, the bullying boys who work and live in the streets, and whom Robin so fears. Either choice provides a sure recipe for a very short life. But in the end it is fear for the life of his baby brother that makes Robin's agonizing decision for him. The answer to whether...

If you think nothing much is going on when Rupert P. Brown III begins sixth grade at Pepperdine Elementary School, you'd be dead wrong. Consider the following: a new teacher with the unlikely name of Miss Blossom; a new principal who has all the girls swooning; a talking bird who thinks he's a math whiz; a computer that goes berserk and produces a Web site called computowitch.com that not only displays some very ominous poetry, but whose password is the name of a witch Rupert has tangled with in the past. Yes, a witch!Faster than you can say "witchcraft and wizardry," Rupert figures he could be in big trouble. He can really use the help of Miss Switch, a real, honest-to-goodness witch herself, who also, amazingly, was once a former popular teacher of Rupert's class at Pepperdine. He has reason to believe she's back, but where?Once again, Rupert records another scary (well, sort of) and funny encounter with Miss Switch. His earlier accounts, equally scary and funny, a...