“It won’t be easy, Rosemary,” said Puck. “You will face dangers only your imagination could dream of.” “I don’t have an imagination,” said Rosemary. “Of course you do. What else would be attacking you?” Rosemary Watson is seeing ghosts—not spectres that rattle their chains, but strange characters that fold out of existence as though they were made of paper. Stranger still, these characters seem somehow familiar, and they want something from her. When her older brother Theo comes home, Rosemary realizes she is not the one who has lost her mind. But who has stolen her brother’s sanity, and what must she do to get it back? With the help of her new friend Peter McAllister and her otherworldly guide, the faerie shapeshifter Puck, Rosemary must face the storybook perils of the Land of Fiction, and learn to open her heart, before it is too late.

On the surface, Peter McAllister has a good life: a good school, good friends, good times. So what if his best friend is a girl—and sort of a geek? And so what if she might be more than a friend. Underneath, it's a different story. It's been years since the death of his parents landed him in this small town with his hardly-there uncle, but he still feels as if his life in Clarksbury is just an inch deep. Does he really belong? Only Rosemary seems real. But that reality comes crashing down the first time he kisses her—and she rejects him. Then a mysterious woman named Fiona appears. She tells him he's a changeling—a fairy child left to live in the human world—and that it's time to come home. Can Rosemary convince him that Fiona is lying? Or is it possible that Fiona is telling the truth?

Rosemary Watson and Peter McAllister think their future is clear: they're finally heading off for university. They're thinking about finding apartments, picking courses, living like adults. But what happens when the future becomes the past? While helping Rosemary's brother move into an apartment in Toronto, Peter and Rosemary fall into an underground river and are swept back in time, to Toronto in 1884. It's a struggle to survive and adapt to the alien culture of the late nineteenth century. Peter and Rosemary are forced to work together, to live together, and to become the adults they've only been pretending to be. As the days stranded turn to weeks, then months, Rosemary and Peter begin to wonder if they're really ready for a future together - and what they will do if they can't get back. Then someone brings them a watch, powered by a battery, made in Taiwan.