Thirteen-year-old fraternal twins Dallas and Florida have grown up in a terrible orphanage but their lives change forever when an eccentric but sweet older couple invites them each on an adventure, beginning in an almost magical place called Ruby Holler.

In this tongue-in-cheek take on classic themes in children's literature, the four Willoughby children set about to become "deserving orphans" after their neglectful parents embark on a treacherous around-the-world adventure, leaving them in the care of an odious nanny.

An eleven-year-old foster child tries to cope with her longings and fears as she schemes against everyone who tries to be friendly. At eleven, Gilly is nobody's real kid. If only she could find her beautiful mother, Courtney, and live with her instead of in the ugly foster home where she has just been placed! How could she, the great Gilly Hopkins, known throughout the county for her brilliance and unmanageability, be expected to tolerate Maime Trotter,...

The Baudelaire orphans begin their journey in a cab with a distraught pregnant woman named Kit Snicket while on route to the Hotel Denouement and must pose as concierges while trying to ferret out the secrets of the elusive sugar bowl.

Under a new government program based on the saying "It takes a village to raise a child," the Baudelaire orphans are adopted by an entire town, with disastrous results.

Thirteen-year-old Nicki Demere is an orphan and a kleptomaniac, making her the perfect girl to portray the Trevors' daughter in witness protection, but she soon learns that the biggest threat to her new family's security comes from her own past.

Orphaned Meira, a fierce chakram-wielding warrior from the Kingdom of Winter, must struggle to free her people from the tyranny of an opposing kingdom while also protecting her own destiny.

In the country of Carthya, a devious nobleman engages four orphans in a brutal competition to be selected to impersonate the king's long-missing son in an effort to avoid a civil war.

In the future, in a place called Satellite City, fourteen-year-old Cosmo Hill enters the world, unwanted by his parents. He's sent to the Clarissa Frayne Institute for Parentally Challenged Boys Freight class. At Clarissa Frayne, the boys are put ot work by the state, testing highly dangerous products. At the end of most days, they are covered in burns, bruises and sores. Cosmo realizes that if he doesn't escape, he will die at this so-called orphanage....

A boy worries that his aunt, who is raising him, will abandon him if she marries.