When their favorite pizza restaurant almost goes out of business, the Alden children try to help their friends stay open while they find out who is behind all their problems.

At the same time that the Alden children's efforts to raise money for a new hospital wing are being sabotaged by nasty tricks, they find their attempts to befriend the new girl Beth frustrated by her strange behavior.

When Lord Cucuface, head of Madeline's school, takes a telescope from the attic during a surprise inspection, its ghostly owner convinces Madeline to help get it back, with help from neighbor Pepito and her fellow orphans.

Annie, who lives at mean Miss Hannigan's orphanage, gets the chance for a new life when the very wealthy Daddy Warbucks invites her to stay at his home for Christmas then offers to adopt her.

Relates the exploits of the four Alden children as they locate a missing man. The Boxcar children are determined to solve the mystery that surrounds an old yellow house on their grandfather's property. Strange things have happened in that house where long ago a man disappeared.

Madeline and the other orphans of the vine-covered house in Paris spend Easter at the White House visiting with the President's daughter.

The Boxcar Children are vacationing on an uninhabited South Seas island, but soon suspect that someone else may be there too-- someone who may not want them around!

The Boxcar Children are spending the summer in a remote fishing village on the New England coast, where they try to find out the secret of a suspicious man snooping in the village library.

"Henry, Jessie, Violet and Benny used to live alone in a boxcar. Now they have a home with their grandfather and are spending the summer on their own private island. There's a mysterious stranger on the island who must keep his identity a secret. And that's not the only surprise in store for the Boxcar Children on Surprise Island!"--Page 4 of cover.