'If you’d once held a book that contained a whole other world in your hands—a world where you’d found a beauty and a love that has always eluded you in this one—and then you lost it, wouldn’t you try to find it again? Wouldn’t you always keep searching?'

As children, three wayward sisters—wandering the grounds of the family’s mysterious seaside hotel in Northern California, on the day of an annual masquerade auction—discover (and steal) a highly desirable and expensive book. . . and accidentally fall into another, more magical world.

At least, Agatha and Ellery do—Margery, the eldest Ellison sister, stays behind.

At first too cautious, then panicked and furious with regret, she's the only witness to her sisters' disappearance as well as the only one to miss them during their absence. . . and when the two younger reappear, they are alternately terrified and awestruck at the fantastical, dangerous years they've spent in another world.

Determined to protect them, Margery gets rid of the book so none of the sisters could ever be tempted to return. . . .

As grownups, the Ellison sisters are separated by distance and disappointments. Agatha is wayward and searching for magic denied, while Ellery has taken her penchant for storytelling and become a bestselling author—with a book that echoes the fantastical story of another world. . . and a love that was lost forever. Margery has thrown herself at the joys of motherhood, and the mundane disappointments of her marriage—though now empty nesting, it's harder to pretend she doesn't still yearn for adventures, and the chance she hadn't taken.

But all three will be drawn together again as their secrets spill out in the face of a threat: a dangerous, enigmatic group is looking for a magical book that was stolen decades ago. And they are willing to kill to get it back. . .

The hardcover edition includes beautiful endpapers.