Twelve-year-old Lizzie Durango lives in a zoo, spending her days taking note of the animals' behaviors, then she meets runaway Tyler Briggs and together they investigate the wolves who are suddenly dying.

For once, operations at the enormous zoo/theme park appear to be running smoothly (except for the occasional herring-related mishap in the penguin exhibit) and Teddy Fitzroy is finally able to give detective work a rest. But then a local lion is accused of killing a famous dog--and the dog's owner, an inflammatory radio host, goes on a crusade to have the cat declared a nuisance so it can be hunted. However, there's evidence that the lion might have...

"Marlin, a stutterer, can talk smoothly and freely with the jungle animals that populate his father's zoo in South America--until a mysterious man-eating black jaguar that his father catches and brings back home talks back"--

Logan and Zoe's efforts to identify a saboteur are complicated by the unchecked activities of the kraken and the agenda of Logan's famous tracker mother.

Twelve-year-old Andrej, nine-year-old Tomas, and their baby sister Wilma flee their Romany encampment when it is attacked by Germans during World War II, and in an abandoned town they find a zoo where the animals tell their stories, helping the children understand what has become of their lives and what it means to be free.