When Storm’s dying mother gives her a small musical pipe and cautions her to keep it safe from “the wrong hands,” Storm can’t begin to imagine what she means. After her father deserts the family, she’s focused on helping her sisters, Aurora and Anything, get by without parents. But when the three girls run from their home to escape the threat of menacing Dr. DeWilde and his wolf pack, Storm brings the pipe along. In a cleverly crafted mosaic of familiar fairy tales, Storm’s story follows the sisters to a sinister gingerbread house, a village emptied by a pied piper, and, eventually, the castle of an ogress, with Dr. DeWilde and his wolves hard at their heels. By the book’s end Storm has learned much about the value of family and her role within it as she creates her own definition of “happily ever after.” (Ages 9–13)

Storm, Aurora, and Anything Eden live in a decaying mansion on the edge of the wilds with their erstwhile father and indolent mother. When an accident leaves them orphaned and at the mercy of the sinister Dr. DeWilde, these three courageous and eccentric sisters are forced to flee into the woods, where they encounter kidnappers, sweet-filled orphanages, mountains of ice, diamond mines, and some ravenously hungry wolves.Taking inspiration from numerous fairytales and weaving them into a wholly original story, Into the Woods is a whirlwind of a novel, full of imaginative happenings and dastardly deeds.