Fay LaFarge is NOT looking forward to the upcoming field trip to the Crunch&Barley Cereal Factory, especially when she's stuck in a group with the horrific Barnaby Hootsman. Fay is a girl who can handle such a disaster. She'll just have to make sure the pirate coin that tumbled into her cereal that morning stays out of the wrong hands...including Barnaby Hootsman's! But when Fay's teacher Miss Parsnip's obsession with pirates becomes all too real, the strange coin turns out to matter more than the average cereal box prize...

Ari Soffit needs to control his temper. Not an easy task when the sinister Wilton Daylatch tries to force Ari's Uncle Ellery to forfeit the family delicatessen. Ari suddenly finds a heavy load on his shoulders when an encounter with a ghostly stranger convinces him that there might be a way out. Soon Ari and his friend Arden are on a dusty trail of clues which could take them to the answer they need...or might just lead to front row seats at the brutally unfair boxing match Uncle Ellery has agreed to in an effort to save the deli.

For Mabel Crockett, the town of Logjam is a fine place to grow up. Sure, some folks are constructed of spare parts, and her own family flies around in a converted WW2 bomber. And over at Halfslips' Center for Botanical Research they're always growing something new and surprising. Not until the creepy Verdon Arbogast begins poking around does Mabel begin to suspect that something really peculiar is going on. Then Mabel receives a cryptic message, and discovers that it's up to her to unravel the secrets of Logjam. Secrets which might reveal more than Mabel wants to know...about herself.