Seventeen-year-old Alice and her mother have spent most of Alice's life on the road, always a step ahead of the uncanny bad luck biting at their heels, But when Alice's grandmother, the reclusive author of a cult-classic book of pitch-dark faity tales, dies alone on her estate, Alice learns how bad her luck can really get: Her mother is stolen away, by a figure who claims to come from the Hinterland, the cruel supernatural world where her grandmother's stories are set. Alice's only lead is a message her mother left behind.