"Esther Gold loves Halloween more than anything in the world. So she is determined to go trick-or-treating again this year despite the fact that her parents think she is officially too old ... But when the night rolls around, something feels ... off. No one is answering their door. The moon is an unnatural shade of orange. Strange children wander the streets, wearing creepy costumes that might not be costumes at all"--

Irish orphans Molly, fourteen, and Kip, ten, travel to England to work as servants in a crumbling manor house where nothing is quite what it seems to be, and soon the siblings are confronted by a mysterious stranger and secrets of the cursed house.

In a manor by the sea, twelve sisters are cursed. Annaleigh lives a sheltered life at Highmoor with her sisters and their father and stepmother. Once there were twelve, but loneliness fills the grand halls now that four of the girls' lives have been cut short. Each death was more tragic than the last -- the plague, a plummeting fall, a drowning, a slippery plunge -- and there are whispers throughout the surrounding villages that the family is cursed...

"Gold is wealth. Wealth is power. Power is a curse. King Midas once had the ability to turn all he touched into gold. But after his gift--or curse--almost killed his daughter, Midas relinquished The Touch forever. Ten years later, Princess Kora still bears the consequences of her father's wish: her skin shines golden, rumors follow her everywhere she goes, and she harbors secret powers that are getting harder to hide. Kora spends her days locked in...

After being shipwrecked on the shores of Egypt and mistaken for a Horse God, Julius can't believe his luck! Soon he and his bedraggled friends will be living it up in the city of Alexandria; preened and pampered like gods. Then a fancy boat procession will take them down the River Nile to Giza where, of course, a lavish party will be thrown in Julius's honour - as well as getting the obligatory tour of the Pyramids. BUT it is this very tour that seems...