When Will Burrows and his friend Chester embark on a quest to find Will's archaeologist father, who has inexplicably disappeared, they are led to a labyrinthine world underneath London, full of sinister inhabitants with evil intentions toward "Topsoilers" like Will and his father

"In the underground city of Caverna the world's most skilled craftsmen toil in the darkness to create delicacies beyond compare - wines that can remove memories, cheeses that can make you hallucinate and perfumes that convince you to trust the wearer, even as they slit your throat. The people of Caverna are more ordinary, but for one thing: their faces are as blank as untouched snow. Expressions must be learned, and only the famous Facesmiths can...

"It was supposed to just be a normal basement--some storage boxes, dust, you know, the usual basement stuff. But when Milo is sent by his mother to fetch a sock from the basement of the historic home they've moved into, Milo finds a door in the back that he's never seen before. Turns out that the basement of his house is enormous. In fact, there is a whole world down there. As Milo travels ever deeper into the Basement World, he meets the many Things...

As fourteen-year-old archaeologist Will and his friends plummet down a subterranean pore, they face deadly creatures and discover a strange fungal shelf, which not only reveals artifacts from ancient civilizations, but clues to a lost land at the end of the Earth.

As two children and their pet gazelle sneak out of the house in search of treasure, they come across a world beneath the city that is inhabited with monsters and pirates

Will Burrows believes he is safe at the very center of the earth, in a world that no one knows exists, but the Styx are close behind and will follow him anywhere, while on the surface, Drake and some unlikely allies unearth some critical secrets