Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny decide to investigate when someone tries to make trouble in the home of a famous inventor of one-of-a-kind clocks.

In the late nineteenth century, when Conor Broekhart discovers a conspiracy to overthrow the king, he is branded a traitor, imprisoned, and forced to mine for diamonds under brutal conditions while he plans a daring escape from Little Saltee prison by way of a flying machine that he must design, build, and, hardest of all, trust to carry him to safety.

"Fenna Vos has learned to focus on her own survival-even now, with the Second World War raging in faraway countries. She works on-stage as the assistant to an unruly escape artist-behind the curtain as the mastermind of their act. After all, her honed ability to control her surroundings and elude entrapments, physical or otherwise, reliably suppresses the trauma and tragedy of her youth. For all her calculations, however, Fenna neglects to foresee...

Gambling everything, including the family farm, Cullen McNamara travels to the 1893 Chicago World's Fair with his most recent invention. But the noise in the fair's Machinery Hall makes it impossible to communicate with potential buyers. In an act of desperation, he hires Della Wentworth, a teacher of the deaf, to tutor him in the art of lip-reading. The young teacher is reluctant to participate, and Cullen has trouble keeping his mind on his lessons...