Joan Lowery Nixon

Sent away on an orphan train by his self-centered father Jessie, Will keeps hoping Jessie will return to claim him, even though the people he lives with care for him far more.

Jeff and Debbie come to the house on Hackman's Hill to look for a stolen Egyptian mummy that old Mr. Karsten has told them about.

Nineteen-year-old Frances Mary Kelly, herself an orphan train rider six years before, returns to New York and agrees to escort a group of orphans west to find new homes.

She spots the masked man in the dark, lonely parking lot--but too late. Grabbed and drugged, Christina is kidnapped and held for ransom. When her family pays, she thinks her ordeal is over. But then she realizes that her family thinks she planned the kidnapping! How will Christina prove her innocence?

Holly Campbell's world has suddenly been turned upside down. Her best friend stands accused of murdering his parents. She knows Cody is innocent, but how can she help him prove it? Holly's father, the detective in charge of the murder investigation, isn't being fair. He's forbidden her to see Cody, and he and her mother are too preoccupied with their failing marriage to listen to reason. Cody's strange neighbor wants to help, but the woman gives Holly...

After being taken in by Captain Taylor and his wife in Kansas, twelve-year-old Mike Kelly and his friend Todd Blakely join the Union army as musicians and see the horrors of war firsthand in Missouri.

Ten-year-old Lucy, an orphan who wants a little sister more than anything, finds a very special one in the less than perfect family which she joins.

When Shirley convinces her husband Claude to help fulfill their adopted daughter's dream of a visit from Santa, she doesn't reckon on the real Santa Claus showing up at their place in Texas.