Eel, an orphan, and his best friend Florrie must help Dr. John Snow prove that cholera is spread through water, and not poisonous air, when an epidemic sweeps across their London neighborhood in 1854.

In the summer of 1968, after travelling from Brooklyn to Oakland, California, to spend a month with the mother they barely know, eleven-year-old Delphine and her two younger sisters arrive to a cold welcome as they discover that their mother, a dedicated poet and printer, is resentful of the intrusion of their visit and wants them to attend a nearby Black Panther summer camp.

Jonah, thirteen, and Katherine, eleven, travel through time to 1918 Russia just as Alexei, Anastasia, and the rest of Tsar Nicholas II's family are about to be executed. Author's note includes facts about the Romanovs and the mystery surrounding their deaths.