When snow closes Greg Heffley's middle school, he and his best friend, Rowley Jefferson, face a fight for survival as warring gangs turn the neighborhood into a wintry battlefield.

Homeschooled by her mechanic-environmentalist father, eleven-year-old Rachel "Ratchet" Vance records her efforts to make friends, save a park, remember her mother, and find her own definition of "normal."

Middle-school drama queen Nikki Maxwell worries about asking a boy to her school's "sweetheart dance."

It's Nikki's birthday, and it is up to her whether it is a blast or a bust.

The pressure's really piling up on Greg Heffley. His mom thinks video games are turning his brain to mush, so she wants her son to put down the controller and explore his creative side. As if that's not scary enough, Halloween's just around the corner and the frights are coming at Greg from every angle. When Greg discovers a bag of gummy worms, it sparks an idea. Can he get his mom off his back by making a movie... and will he become rich and famous...

When Jamie inherits her grandmother's trunk, she discovers an old diary and, after reading it, realizes that everyone is the same deep down.

The Heffley family road trip starts off full of promise, then quickly takes several wrong turns--with everything from a fender bender to crazed seagulls--but even the worst road trip can turn into an adventure, and this is one the Heffleys will not soon forget.

"Life was better in the old days. Or was it? That's the question Greg Heffley is asking as his town voluntarily unplugs and goes electronics-free. But modern life has its conveniences, and Greg isn't cut out for an old-fashioned world. With tension building inside and outside the Heffley home, will Greg find a way to survive?"--

When Miss Know-It-All's inbox overflows with pleas for guidance, Nikki Maxwell, the school newspaper advice columnist, turns to her best friends for help.

Nikki's diary describes a frightful Halloween, on which she helps with her sister's ballet class party at the same time she is Brandon's date for their middle school Halloween dance, where she has promised to spend the evening with her two best friends.