I've been waiting for this book for over 15 years and it is everything I hoped it would be and more. Simply breathtaking' MARK BILLINGHAM Twice upon a time - for that is how some stories should continue . . . Phoebe, an eight-year-old girl, lies comatose following a car accident. She is a body without a spirit, a stolen child. Ceres, her mother, can only sit by her bedside and read aloud to Phoebe the fairy stories she loves in the hope they might summon her back to this world. But it is hard to keep faith, so very hard. Now 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, and to journey - to a land coloured by the memories of Ceres's childhood, and the folklore beloved of her father, to a land of witches and dryads, giants and mandrakes; to a land where old enemies are watching, and waiting. To the Land of Lost Things. For anyone who loved THE BOOK OF LOST THINGS and for all readers who enjoy dark, beautifully written fables that explore the heart of the human condition: love, loyalty and sacrifice. 'This dark fairy tale, sequel to The Book of Lost Things (2006), speaks volumes about a mother's devotion [...] A feat of imagination that will please Connolly's fans' Kirkus