In 1870s London, a young orphan girl becomes the apprentice to a man who traps monsters for a living.

Sixteen-year-old Eon hopes to become an apprentice to one of the twelve energy dragons of good fortune and learn to be its main interpreter, but to do so will require much, including keeping secret that she is a girl.

In their continuing adventures, magician's apprentice Nathaniel, now fourteen years old, and the djinni Bartimaeus travel to Prague to locate the source of a golem's power before it destroys London.

In 1896, an archaeological dig unearths an ancient trunk containing manuscripts that confirm the existence of Araluen Rangers Will and Halt and tell of their first meeting and some of their previously unknown exploits.

Now thirteen years old, Tom Ward continues his apprenticeship with the Spook as they confront a dangerous bane who can control people's thoughts.

Ready to be presented to the last apprentice, Tom Ward, the spook's notebook contains instructions for vanquishing boggarts, witches, the unquiet dead, and other dark creatures and spirits.

In 1835, when his father is put in a Philadelphia debtor's prison, twelve-year-old chess prodigy Rufus Goodspeed is relieved to be recruited to secretly operate a chess-playing automaton named The Turk, but soon questions the fate of his predecessors and his own safety.

With evil Prince Nightshade hot on their trail, Alastair Grim and his apprentice Grubb and the rest of the crew of the unique mechanical/magical apparatus known as the Odditorium embark on a perilous underwater adventure to the otherworldly realm of Avalon, to find the legendary sword Excalibur, the only weapon capable of penetrating the prince's magical suit of armor.

Tom is dismayed when his master the Spook decrees that they will be spending the winter on gloomy and forbidding Anglezarke Moor but soon discovers the reason for his master's decision, as they tangle with two dangerous witches and struggle to keep a dark mage from resurrecting an ancient evil.

Alice and five other apprentice Readers face the fight of their lives when they are sent into the magical library of a late rival Reader--a library that's still protected by a vicious guardian.