The redemptive power of stories and family is revealed in New York Times bestselling author John Connolly´s atmospheric tale set in the same magical universe as the "enchanting, engrossing, and enlightening" (Sun Sentinel, Fort Lauderdale) The Book of Lost Things. "Twice upon a time--for that is how some stories should continue..." In this "dark fairy tale" (Kirkus Reviews), Phoebe, an eight-year-old girl, lies comatose following a car accident--a body without a spirit. Ceres, her mother, can only sit by her bedside and read aloud the fairy stories Phoebe loves in the hope they might summon her back to this world. But an old house on the hospital grounds, a property connected to a book written by a vanished author, is calling to Ceres. Something wants her to enter, to journey to a land colored by the memories of childhood, and the folklore beloved of her father--a land of witches and dryads, giants and mandrakes; a land where old enemies are watching and waiting...