In 1862 Nevada Territory, after finding his foster parents murdered and scalped, twelve-year-old Pinky Pinkerton, son of a railroad detective and a Sioux Indian, inherits a valuable deed and must hide from dangerous Whittlin Walt and his gang of desperados.

Eleven-year-old Flavia and her friends Jonathan, Lupus, and Nubia are invited to visit Pulchra, who asks them to uncover who is trying to poison her mother.

"After escaping the ruthless desperados, master-of-disguise P.K. Pinkerton has now set up a Private Eye business in Virginia City and is ready when a young maid named Martha approaches him for help in escaping a killer"--

Flavia and her friends are shippwrecked on their way back to Ostia from North Africa. In a desparate quest to find a missing friend, the group finds themelves in the Egyptian port town of Alexandria.

Flavia and her friends pursue tutor Aristo from Corinth to Athens when he escapes after being accused of committing a brutal attack on Flavia's father.

Flavia and her friends go to Rome to celebrate the Festival of Jupiter at Senator Cornix's town house, where they befriend the young charioteer, Scopas, and quickly find themselves embroiled in a campaign to sabotage one of the rival racing factions.

Flavia and Nubia follow Jonathan to Rome and into the Golden House built by the emperor Nero, where a dangerous assassin lurks.

Jonathan and his friends are called to Rome by the emperor in the winter of 80 A.D. to find the new Prometheus believed to have brought an epidemic to the city, but Jonathan, obsessed with reuniting his parents, makes some unwise--and life-threatening--choices.

At a refugee camp following the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius which buried Pompeii, Flavia and her friends discover that children are disappearing and a very powerful citizen might be involved.