There's a new, mysterious flight of stairs outside 14-year-old Carol Tanner's bedroom. It goes up and up and up, into the realms of sheer impossibility — just as stairs in a three-bedroomed semi-detached house on Willow Drive shouldn't. And it's not there all the time...

One day, Carol decides to escape up those stairs, leaving her difficult life in this world for just the sort of fantasy land she so loves to read about.

The trouble is, that land is dying. The Princess, who sings the sun to new life each day, has been kidnapped by the evil Necromancer, and all the heroes sent to rescue her have not come back. The days are getting darker. Can Carol, and her doleful young companion, the Dolorous Lord, do something to save this world when so many heroes have failed?