There’s something odd about the house David Cray and his mom moved into following his parents’ split. Sure, it’s old and battered and a little off kilter, but that’s not all. With so many nooks and crannies, it seems like the walls were built to keep things hidden—or maybe from getting out.

Everyone in the City is assigned a job by the choosers—keeper, catcher, computer. Callie Crawford is a computer. She works with numbers: putting them together, taking them apart. Her work is important, but sometimes she wants more. Jeremy Finn is a dreambender. His job is to adjust people’s dreams.

At four-foot-two, Sammy Carducci may be the shortest kid in the class, but he’s not going to let that stand in his way. Dressing for school in a suit, tie, and sneakers, he dares to be different.

When strange pranks are played on the Pirelli Youth Orchestra, trumpet player Sizzle—Prudence Szyznowski—and tuba player Splat—Arthur Handley Reavis Pauling III—have a baffling mystery to investigate.

Benjamin Bean hates computers the way most kids hate homework. Suddenly, Benjy’s worst nightmare comes true—he’s trapped inside a computer.

As he hunts for an escape, Benjy discovers that he’s become a glitch—a malfunction in the system. The Computer Police, led by the dreaded Delete, are searching for him. With his companions—a tailcoated professor, M the minstrel, and Negatori—Benjy undertakes a dangerous journey from the I/O Port, through the Electric Forest, to CPU City. Not only must he find his way home, but he must contend with the warring factions of ROM and RAM, which are threatening the Computer Kingdom.

When the Pirelli Youth Orchestra’s rehearsal room is vandalized and the orchestra is warned not to play Hans Kleiman’s trumpet concerto at the fall concert, no one can figure out why. Then the orchestra’s sponsor is kidnapped, and his abductors say they will return him after the concert—providing the concerto is not played.

Tim Julian has been feeling pretty empty ever since his father died. Especially now that his mother is seeing a new boyfriend. So when he has to write a report for his eleventh grade English class on a once famous person, Tim suddenly remembers Felix the Great, the legendary Chicago Cubs shortstop who had been his father’s hero.

Being the kid from the Dunker’s Delights commercials—and having his face on every billboard in town—made Bobby Rothman feel like a freak. He hated having pushy show-biz parents, and looking like twelve when he was really sixteen.

If you didn’t know Scott, you’d think he was a bully. He was big, with a loud voice, and he liked to argue and pound one fist into the other. But he wasn’t really like that. He hated to play football. He hated violence. And Scott and Gary were best friends.