Long ago in Nowhere, Texas, Mama and Papa Upagainstit agree to take in the wild baby their five children find in a passing tumbleweed, despite the objections of the one who used to be "the littlest-of-all girl."

When sixteen-year-old Delphine, a dressmaker mouse in Cinderella's chateau, learns of her connection to the Threaded, magical tailor mice of legend, she undertakes an epic quest to claim her identity.

Left at the Mostly Silent Monastery in Washington, D.C. as a toddler and home-schooled by a retired nun, twelve-year-old Bicycle rides cross-country to meet a famous cyclist who she hopes will be her first friend.

"All sorcerers are evil. Elisabeth has known that as long as she has known anything. Raised as a foundling in one of Austermeer's Great Libraries, Elisabeth has grown up among the tools of sorcery -- magical grimoires that whisper on shelves and rattle beneath iron chains. If provoked, they transform into grotesque monsters of ink and leather. She hopes to become a warden, charged with protecting the kingdom from their power. Then an act of sabotage...

From the time she was a crippled baby, left in a church, Maggie's life has never been easy but when she glimpses her destiny in a magic mirror, she goes off on a quest to find her father and, along the way, finds happiness, as well.