When August DuPont, eleven, leaves his eccentric Aunt Hydrangea's crumbling mansion for the first time ever, he meets family, makes a friend, and attracts a zombie.

"Mystery-book aficionado Birdie Lindberg has an overactive imagination. Homeschooled by strict grandparents, she's cultivated a fantasy life in which she plays the heroic detective and every stranger is a suspect. She works the graveyard shift at a historic Seattle hotel, where Daniel Aoki is the van driver. He also patronizes the waterfront Moonlight Diner where she waits for the early morning ferry after work. They stumble upon a real-life mystery:...

The journey begins on a ship at sea in 1766, with a boy named Billy Marvel. After surviving a shipwreck, he finds work in a London theatre. There, his family flourishes for generations as brilliant actors until 1900, when young Leontes Marvel is banished from the stage. Nearly a century later, Joseph Jervis runs away from school and seeks refuge with a reclusive uncle in London. Albert Nightingale's strange, beautiful house, with its mysterious portraits...

A young boy relates his adventures during the year he spends living alone in the Catskill Mountains including his struggle for survival, his dependence on nature, his animal friends, and his ultimate realization that he needs human companionship.