Marty finds a lost beagle in the hills behind his West Virginia home, and tries to hide it from his family and the dog's real owner, a mean-spirited man known to shoot deer out of season and to mistreat his dogs.
When mean and angry Judd, who has never known kindness, takes to drinking and mistreats his dogs, Marty discovers how deep a hurt can go and how long it takes to heal.
When his father disappears near the Mexican border at the end of the Civil War, twelve-year-old Tyler decides to go after him and bring him home, acquiring on the journey a strange dog which he names Bigger.
A fourteen-year-old Eskimo boy who feels assailed by the modernity of his life takes a 1400-mile journey by dog sled across ice, tundra, and mountains seeking his own "song" of himself.
Running away from a vicious trapper, seven-year-old Ben MacDonald is separated from his family and eventually ends up on the shores of Lake Winnipeg, where he is taken in by a tribe of Metis Indians.
Living with his family in the rugged, often dangerous, Wyoming mountains in the 1860's, twelve-year-old Adam finds his courage put to the test when he is left in charge of the household during his stepfather's absence.
The mousemaid Mariel achieves victory at sea for the animals of Redwall Abbey, fighting the savage pirate rat Gabool the Wild, warlord of rodent corsairs.
