Neutron transfer reactions with fast secondary beams of 17 Ne, 15 O, and 9 C have been studied with the HiRA and CAESAR arrays. Excited states of 18 Ne, 16 O, and 10 C in the continuum have been identified using invariant-mass spectroscopy. The best experimental resolution of these states is achieved by selecting events where the decay fragments are emitted transverse to the beam direction. We have confirmed a number of spin assignments made in previous works for the negative-parity states of 18 Ne. In addition we have found new higher-lying excited states in 16 O and 18 Ne, some of which fission into two ground-state 8 Be fragments. Finally for 10 C, a new excited state was observed. These transfer reactions were found to leave the remnant of the 9 Be target nuclei at very high excitation energies and maybe associated with the pickup of a deeply-bound 9 Be neutron.