Marion Thomas, American and newly arrived in a southern city, is nursing wounds from a tragedy that occurred on her birthday the year before. She is wandering her new hometown, merely looking for a coffee and hoping for a low-key celebration of how far she’s come -both literally and figuratively- in the past year. Upon discovering a library in the basment of the cafe building, she finds far more than she anticipated. For this is a mysterious Library that lends not only its books but the characters as well -though only to a chosen few and with a purpose to which no one other than the Librarian is privy. Marion is informed by the tart-tongued Head Librarian, Mrs Sera Tosthene -whose name bears an uncanny resemblance to that of the chief librarian from the ancient library of Alexandria- that she has been selected to receive just such a 'gift with purchase'. Marion goes along with the ploy, though assuming that she is the unwilling patsy for a reality TV show she doesn’t take it all too seriously. Despite being instructed not to touch books she has no intention of borrowing, she runs her hands willy-nilly along the shelves. As a result, she is utterly gobsmacked to see a cast of literary characters running (and flying) around the library. Mrs T., the Librarian is less than impressed at this outcome as she is forced to race around recapturing the escaped characters. With a tight time restraint, ans seconds to spare, Marion slides into home base with her hastily-chosen book. A slim volume, the title of which she cannot make out. She leaves with the book in a brown paper bag and instructions to begin reading only once she is home. Unimpressed with the experience, Marion retreats to the cafe and drinks several coffees, while she ignores the note Mrs T. has pinned to the bag. Before she goes to sleep that night, Marion reads the first chapter of her chosen novel -which turns out to be Jack London's Call of the Wild, the story revolving around Buck, an enormous St. Bernard-Sheepdog cross. When, as promised, she receives her unexpected ‘gift with purchase’ in the form of a large slobbering canine companion who drops in on her (quite literally) at two in the morning she is initially terrified and subsequently forced to acknowledge that it all may be more real than she first assumed. Mrs T. gets her own back for the extra work she was obliged to do rounding up stray characters by giving Marion an additional gift -a small vampire bat by the name of Charlie!