Alberto, the town's coffin maker, and Tito, a runaway boy, both lonely after suffering tragic losses, learn the power of friendship as they try to escape the shadows of their pasts.

"Grandpa's in the hospital and hating it. He swears at the nurses and makes trouble for everyone. Dad finds it too stressful to visit, but Gottfried Junior visits Grandpa as often as he's allowed, and when he's not allowed, he goes anyway. Grandpa thinks only of the place he was happiest--the island where he lived with Grandma before she died. He wants to go back one last time, but they won't let him out of the hospital. Gottfried Junior and Grandpa...

Two brothers, having run away from the aunt who plans to adopt only the younger one, are sought by a detective hired by their aunt, but they find protection from a gang of Venetian street children and their leader, the Thief Lord.

In 1904, twelve-year-old Orphelia follows her dream by running away from home to join an all-black minstrel show headed for the Saint Louis World's Fair, and learns about her family's troubled past in the process.

"After being forced to give up his pet fox Pax, a young boy named Peter decides to leave home and get his best friend back"--

Young Charles Magnus Ven Polypheme is sent on a secret mission within the walls of the Gated City, a former penal colony in the land of Serendair, where he and his friends face kidnapping and even worse dangers from the ruthless Thief Queen, who is trying to reclaim her runaway daughter.

In this graphic retelling, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn witness a murder, run away from home, and find a treasure in nineteenth-century Missouri.