Twelve-year-old Lily Pruitt loves her grandparents, but she doesn't love the circus -- and the circus is their life. She's perfectly happy to stay with her father, away from her neglectful mother and her grandfather's elephant, Queenie Grace. Queenie Grace, a circus elephant, is happy to have Grandpa Bill as her keeper. She has had cruel keepers in the past, but Bill is her friend and treats her with love and respect. She doesn't quite understand...

In 1944 in Hartford, Connecticut, twelve-year-old Audrey dreams of being an aerialist like her heroes, the Flying Wallendas, and so she is excited to go to Ringling Brothers circus with her six-year-old twin sisters; but at the show a fire breaks out, and as the crowd starts to panic Audrey struggles to reach her sisters--she gets Patty out, but Charlotte, afraid of heights, refuses to jump from the higher seats, and disappears as the big top comes...

Aboard "The Boundless," the greatest train ever built, on its maiden voyage across Canada, teenaged Will enlists the aid of a traveling circus to save the train from villains.

In his thirteenth year, Will Sparrow, liar and thief, becomes a runaway. On the road, he encounters a series of con artists-a pickpocket, a tooth puller, a pig trainer, a conjurer-and learns that others are more adept than he at lying and thieving. Then he reluctantly joins a traveling troupe of "oddities," including a dwarf and a cat-faced girl, holding himself apart from the "monsters" and resolving to be on guard against further deceptions. At...