The Runner is one of seven books in the Tillerman cycle and is first in the cycle's internal chronology. Four of the books feature the children of Bullet's sister, Liza. Homecoming tells of her four children, who she abandons in a parking lot in a Connecticut shopping mall, and their efforts to get to their grandmother's home in Maryland. They are unsure if their grandmother knows of their existence or if she will be willing to take them. Dicey's Song continues the saga after they arrive at their grandmother's home, and it centers on the efforts of the children and grandmother to merge as a family. It includes the death of the children's mother. Sons from Afar relates the efforts of the two boys in the family to locate their father, who never married their mother and who abandoned them years before. Seventeen Against the Dealer...