Most people aren't very comfortable in the woods, but the woods of Briery Swamp fit May Bird like a fuzzy mitten. There, she is safe from school and the taunts and teases of kids who don't understand her. Hidden in the trees, May is a warrior princess, and her cat, Somber Kitty, is her brave guardian. Then May falls into the lake. When she crawls out, May finds herself in a world that most certainly does not feel like a fuzzy mitten. In fact it is a place few living people have ever seen. Here, towns glow blue beneath zipping stars and the people—people? — walk through walls. Here the Book of the Dead holds the answers to everything in the universe. And here, if May is discovered, the horrifyingly evil Bo Cleevil will turn her into nothing. May Bird must get out. Fast. Within these pages, Jodi Lynn Anderson shares with us the beginning of May Bird's daring journey into the Ever After, a haunting place where true friends—and one terrible foe—await her on every corner.

May Bird has always been a bit...different. While most of her classmates were riding their bikes, she was running around the woods dressed as a warrior princess with her hairless cat at her side. And instead of spending summer vacation at birthday parties, May was discovering a mysterious lake hidden among the trees—and stumbling into the land of ghosts, the Ever After. A fearful and fantastic realm located among the stars, the Ever After is full of all manner of things that go bump in the night. And if May is to find her way out again, she must reach the mysterious Lady of North Farm, who lives in a cold, forbidding land that even the spooks find spooky. With her courageous (yet melancholy) kitty and a ragtag group of spectral friends she's picked up along the way, May is determined to escape the Afterlife. But first she must face her very worst fears, and there's no telling who will make it through...or who will be left behind.

At Hog Wallow Middle School, May Ellen Bird was always slightly invisible. Then she went on a long trip to the land of the dead, where ghost towns glowed blue in the dark dusk and spooky specters dwelled in cities on the Dead Sea. Back on Earth at last, May and her hairless cat, Somber Kitty, are now famous, their faces plastered across souvenirs and sportswear that read "May Bird Went to the Land of the Dead and All She Brought Me Was This Lousy T-Shirt." But, finally in the spotlight, May feels more than ever that she doesn't belong. Every night she sits by her bedroom window, gazing at the sky and dreaming of another place, wishing—despite herself—to be back among the ghosts. And then one night she gets her heart's desire in a way she would never have wished for. Only the Ever After isn't anything like the world May left behind three years ago. The spirits have vanished, and the towns—once full of every manner of things that go bump in the night—are deserted. Evil Bo Cleevil has made the Ever After as cold as his own frigid soul, and put up a bunch of tacky malls to boot. Now, with her friends missing and enemies all around her, May must find her way to the edge of the universe, where night swallows the stars, where allies are few and often have bad breath, where endings can also be beginnings, and where the truest hero lurks in the unlikeliest of souls. But Bo Cleevil's got one last trick up his sleeve—one that no one on Earth is ready for. With the worlds of the living and the dead in the balance, will May's courage fail her one last time? Or will she finally become the warrior she was always meant to be?

Journey to the Ever After with the fantastical and otherworldly May Bird trilogy from New York Times bestselling author Jodi Lynn Anderson, now available in a collectible boxed set! When May Bird and her faithful companion, Somber Kitty, encounter the ghostly world of the Ever After, their (after)lives will change forever. This collectible boxed set includes paperback editions The Ever Shy, precocious May Bird wants nothing more than to be accepted. One day she falls through a lake into the Ever After, a world of ghosts. As she journeys through fantastic lands, she gathers an unusual group of new friends who join together to overcome the chillingly evil Bo Cleevil and find their way home. Among the May Bird continues her adventure through the Ever After in pursuit of home. Along the way, she and her friends encounter all sorts of places and ghosts, from the terrifying to the hilarious. Finally May learns that the only way home is through the evil Bogey’s personal portal, which he uses to scare kids in their nightmares. Warrior Now thirteen and home in Briery Swamp, May is still haunted by thoughts of the friends she left behind in the Ever After. Then one night May travels back to the Ever After—only to learn that the evil Bo Cleevil is close to making his reign supreme. At last, May is ready to live up to the prophecy that placed the fate of the Ever After in her hands, and battle Bo Cleevil himself to save not only this world but her own as well.