100 Cupboards

Plot

Henry York ends up in Henry, Kansas, living with his aunt, uncle, and three cousins after his parents vanish during a bike trip in South America. On his first night, he heads for the bathroom but finds the door shut and the light on. He waits, and a short man walks out, then slips into Grandfather's bedroom—a room that has stayed locked since Grandfather died two years earlier. Later, plaster falls from Henry's attic wall, exposing two master lock dials attached to a hundred tiny, locked cupboards.

While home alone with his cousin Henrietta, Henry opens one cupboard and finds a key. That key unlocks Grandfather's bedroom door, where they discover a journal containing a map of the cupboards. One morning, Henrietta vanishes without explanation. Henry reads a journal entry that explains how the cupboards work, then crawls through one in Grandfather's room to search for Grandfather.

After a series of strange events, he locates Grandfather in a palace ballroom inside a ruined city. They cannot return until the master locks are reset to their original positions, so they hide in a dark cupboard. From there, they watch a group accompanied by wolf-like creatures called witch-dogs slaughter nearly everyone at a ball, but they manage to escape. Meanwhile, Uncle Frank tries to find Henry and Henrietta.

Aunt Dotty tells Penelope and Anastasia that Frank once traveled through the cupboards long ago, and that their great-grandfather invented and powered the cupboards. But Frank arrives too late: a Witch named Nimiane, strengthened by Henry's blood, emerges from the Endor cupboard (the eighth one) with her cat and stabs Frank. Aunt Dotty, Penelope, and Anastasia rush upstairs to see what is happening, and Dotty collapses into a state like Frank's. Henry and Henrietta come out of the cupboard and fight the witch, but it is Zeke—a boy stopping by to see if Henry wanted to play baseball—who knocks her out with a baseball bat swing.

The children shove her through the cupboard into an unnamed place, and Dotty and Frank are taken to the hospital, where they recover.

Main characters

Henry York is the 12-year-old protagonist. He lived with his adopted parents, Phil and Ursula, who were kidnapped shortly before the story begins. After moving in with his aunt and uncle, Henry learns he originated from a world beyond the cupboards. Frank Willis, born Francis, went questing through a portal into Kansas as a teenager and married Dorothy, with whom he had three daughters. Henrietta Willis, the middle daughter, is stubborn and overly curious, with dark curly hair and green eyes. Penelope Willis, the oldest, sometimes called Penny, has nearly black hair and often acts too old for make-believe. Anastasia Willis, the youngest at nine, is small and wiry, freckly with brown hair that looked like it wanted to be red, and is sometimes rude and prying. Dorothy Willis, called Dots by her husband and Dotty by others, is the sister of Ursula, Henry's adopted mother.