For most of Tony Gilbert's life, he has thought of his uncle as "Weird Uncle Charlie." That is, until Uncle Charlie moves in with Tony and his family. Uncle Charlie is still odd, of course--talking about spirits and other supernatural stuff--but he and Tony become fast friends, and Tony ends up having a lot of fun with Uncle Charlie. When Uncle Charlie dies suddenly, Tony is devastated. Then he starts seeing Uncle Charlie everywhere! It doesn't help...

Ragweed, a young country mouse, leaves his family and travels to the big city, where he finds excitement and danger and sees cats for the first time.

Five original stories where strange changes occur, from a boy and a cat changing places and a young man learning the price of selfishness to an invisible princess finding herself.

Poppy the deer mouse urges her family to move next to a field of corn big enough to feed them all forever, but Mr. Ocax, a terrifying owl, has other ideas.

Night after night, a ghost appears in the royal castle of Pergamontio, terrifying the princess. Mangus the Magician doesn't believe in ghosts, but still the King charges him with finding this one and freeing his daughter from its torment. If he can't, Mangus will pay with his life. The magician's only hope is his faithful, street-smart servant boy, Fabrizio, who must solve the mystery of the ghost using logic and reason -- and a bit of magic of his...

When their home next to a brook is destroyed by beavers, a large family of golden mice is aided by Poppy the deer mouse and her grumpy porcupine friend, who in the process forges a relationship with the son he had abandoned.

In Providence, R.I., in 1848, Edgar Allan Poe reluctantly investigates the problems of eleven-year-old Edmund, whose family has mysteriously disappeared and whose story suggests a new Poe tale with a ghastly final twist.

"Mangus the Magician and his thirteen-year-old servant, Fabrizio, are commanded to go to Venice, on pain of death, to find a book by Friar Luca Pacioli that reportedly contains a magical means of making money; but Venice is a strange and dangerous city, and someone else is also after the book--then Mangus is arrested, and taken to the prison, and Fabrizio and Bianca, an orphan he has met, must find a way to secure the book, save Magnus, and themselves"--Title...

Convicted of thievery and transported from England to America, Oliver Cromwell Pitts, shackled to his fellow prisoners, endures inedible food, filthy conditions, and deadly storms on his voyage across the Atlantic. But the hazardous shipboard journey is nothing compared to the peril that waits for him on the colonial shores.   In Annapolis, Oliver's indentured servitude is purchased by the foul, miserly Fitzhugh, who may have murdered another...