A queen, desperate to obtain the gift of shape-shifting, makes a daring play: she hires the sorceress Gray Alys, a woman as feared as she is powerful. Sent to the ghostly wilderness of the Lost Lands, Alys and her guide, the drifter Boyce, must outwit and outfight man and demon in a fable that explores the nature of good and evil, debt and fulfillment, love and loss.

A group of late 19th century German teenagers – silenced and controlled by a censorious society – discover a new world of feeling and freedom outside the classroom, with beautiful and devastating consequences.