Twelve-year-old Lillian, an orphan who loves roaming the woods looking for fairies when her chores are done, is bitten by a deadly snake and saved through the magical forest creatures in this expansion on the author's and illustrator's previous work, A circle of cats.

At the heart of Tamson House is the Wood. And in that Wood is the Mystery. Tamson House, in modern, urban Ottawa, is a rambling, eccentric curiosity of a house - and a place of hidden Power. Built at a point where the leylines meet, upon land that was once a sacred site, it is the gateway to a spirit world where Celtic and Native American magicks mingle and leak into our own. In the overgrown garden of Tamson House, a Coyote Man waits, green children...

After a childhood of abuse and drug addiction, Jilly Coppercorn is well on her way to being normal as an art school student when she runs into Donna Birch, her only friend from the bad old days, at the start of this appealing urban fantasy set in Newford in 1972. Donna takes Jilly into a realm similar to this world, but where things have a way of working out better. It's almost a paradise, a place where dreams are almost too easily realized, until...