The pastoral quiet of Warmbriar is unravelling: A mysterious creature is stealing sheep from the flocks outside town, a Stranger wanders out of the Bloodwood, and someone has robbed the local skinflint, Tayben Rod.

As imaginative young Pilcrow struggles to piece together what’s happening, he begins to suspect there are trolls in the woods, but a book — Benjamin Weatherby’s Practical Bestiary — says trolls aren’t real.

The sequential discoveries of earlier editions, each of which says something different, lead Pilcrow along a trail of clues from the top of sleepy Tawidge Chapel, high above town, to the catacombs far underground; from the busy streets and university halls of Dunboven to a shadowed ravine deep in the Bloodwood, where something waits in a cave.

With each newfound edition of the book, Pilcrow comes a little closer to solving the mystery — and saving his town. Will he find the truth before it’s too late?