From the author of The Railway Children and Five Children and It comes this tale of six siblings and their adventures in Victorian London. The Bastable children are deeply saddened bythe death of their mother, and to make things worse, they're impoverished when their father's business fails. Determined to restore both the family's fortune and its good name, the young Bastables embark on a variety of hilarious get-rich-quick schemes.

Each chapter details a new adventure, from digging for treasure and becoming detectives and highway robbers, to writing a newspaper and selling wine. The children accost a nobleman on Blackheath and are mistaken for blackmailers, pay a visit to a moneylender, encounter a royal princess in Greenwich Park, and earnestly pursue other comic ventures. Their courage and determination provide a heartwarming complement to the droll narrative, and their hopes, disappointments, and triumphs remain as real and moving today as they were a century ago.