Drifter Frank Chambers and Cora Papadakis murder Cora’s husband Nick and escape conviction through a lawyer’s trick.

Jimmy Marcus, believing his childhood friend Dave Boyle murdered his daughter Katie, kills Dave by the river.

Roz, a robot who washed ashore on a wild island and learned to survive by raising an orphaned gosling named Brightbill, is badly damaged when the RECO robots come to take her back.

Fourteen-year-old Jacob Barber’s murder trial collapses when another man confesses and dies.

Ivan, a silverback gorilla who has lived for twenty-seven years in a cage at a shopping-mall circus, keeps his promise to the dying elephant Stella to rescue the baby elephant Ruby.

A mysterious “Pulse” sent through cell phones turns users into mindless “phoners.” Artist Clay Riddell finds his son Johnny, who was partly affected, and in the final scene he puts a phone to Johnny’s ear, hoping a second pulse will reset his mind; the book ends before we learn if it works.

Edward Tulane, a proud china rabbit who once loved only himself, is lost at sea and passed through many hands, learning to love and grieve.

Despereaux Tilling, a small mouse in love with Princess Pea, goes down into the castle dungeon to rescue her from the rat Roscuro and the servant girl Miggery Sow.

Sarah Wheaton, who came from Maine to the prairie in answer to Papa’s newspaper ad for a wife, takes the wagon to town alone, and the children, Anna and Caleb, fear she will leave for the sea.

Nana, the Paris courtesan who ruined many rich men, returns from abroad and dies of smallpox in a hotel room in July 1870.