What evil grows in Nightfall Gardens? Vain Lily Blackwood and her shy brother Silas wonder if their family will ever settle in one place long enough to lead a normal life. When a mysterious stranger in a wolf-hide cloak arrives claiming to be their uncle, they discover their parents have been hiding a secret that turns their world upside down. The two are kidnapped and transported to Nightfall Gardens, the family's ancestral home, a place shrouded in fog and ancient mystery, where they meet their dying grandmother and learn of an age-old curse placed on Blackwood females. Lily must take over as protector of the house and three haunted gardens that hold mythical beasts, fairy-tale nightmares and far worse. If she doesn't, the evil trapped there will be unleashed and bring on a new dark age. While she deals with malevolent ghosts, murderous dolls and killer insects inside the house, Silas is put to work in the gardens, a hothouse of terror, where one wrong step means death. Along the way, they search to unlock the riddle of the curse and to stop the creatures in the gardens before time runs out and the world is destroyed.