Sixteen-year-old Charles Leland is not looking forward to his summer holidays from Eton—not when he has to spend them cramming history to make up for a less-than-stellar grade last term. Even the thought of staying with his sister Persy and her husband Lochinvar while his parents are in Ireland can't cheer him up.
But studying quickly takes a back seat to finding out what has happened to Persy, who disappears from home the day he arrives. All signs indicate that she's been kidnapped by gypsies...but a gypsy boy named Nando convinces Charles that her disappearance has a much more otherworldly explanation.
Now Charles must brave the perils and sheer strangeness of the fairy lands to try to prevent Persy from being forcibly married to a powerful fairy lord. With the help of the fairy lord's own younger (and alarmingly pretty) sister, a copy of "History and Policy of the Norman and Angevin Kings" that he's supposed to read before September, and Her Majesty Queen Victoria, he just might be able to do it. But will he also be able to rescue himself?