Meet the Melendys! The four Melendy children live with their father and Cuffy, their beloved housekeeper, in a worn but comfortable brownstone in New York City. There's thirteen-year-old Mona, who has decided to become an actress; twelve-year-old mischievous Rush; ten-and-a-half-year-old Randy, who loves to dance and paint; and thoughtful Oliver, who is just six. Tired of wasting Saturdays doing nothing but wishing for larger allowances, the four...

Portia and her cousin Julian discover summer adventure in a hidden colony of forgotten summer houses on the shores of a swampy lake.

Eleven-year-old Portia and her family return with cousin Julian to the site they visited the previous summer, this time to take possession of a large Victorian house, unoccupied for fifty years and full of treasures and secr

A wish comes true! That's waht Portia thinks when her parents buy Villa Caprice, a tumbledown Victorian house along the swampy edge of Gone-Away Lake. A new house is always full of surprises, but Portia is completely unprepared for the extraordinary things that happen when her family moves into a new old house.