After being sold as a bride to a wealthy family that treats her poorly, eleven-year-old Jing, with the help of her animal friends, runs away.

"Maren Yearly is a young woman who wants the same things we all do. She wants to be someone people admire and respect. She wants to be loved. But her secret, shameful needs have forced her into exile. She hates herself for the bad thing she does, for what it's done to her family and her sense of identity; for how it dictates her place in the world and how people see her--how they judge her. She didn't choose to be this way. Because Maren Yearly doesn't...

Leven is summoned to the abode of the Want, not knowing whether that leader's intentions are to harm or to help Foo, and soon Leven is separated from his good friends as he continues his battle to save that mythical land.

Sixteen-year-old Silver Blackthorn of the feudal English village, Martindale, takes the coming-of-age test that determines her place in society and learns that she is to become an Offering for King Victor, placing her in a warped world of suspicion from which she knows she must escape.