When thirteen-year-old cousins Ivan and Daphne go on a treasure hunt in the rain one summer day, they never expect to stumble into a whole new world where words and numbers run wild. After the cousins outwit a plague of punctuation, grateful villagers beg them to find Lexicon’s missing children, who have been enticed away by dancing lights in the sky. With new friends, strange meetings, and deepening perils, the cousins must find a way to solve the mystery and return the lost children of Lexicon to their homes before it’s too late.

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The return to Lexicon is not at all as Ivan and Daphne imagined. For one thing, Aunt Adelaide is deathly ill. For another, their musical younger cousin, Lila, has stumbled into their secret land. Instead of rejoining old friends in the Land of Morning, Ivan and Daphne find themselves tracing Lila through a wintery landscape where what matters most is how well a person sings. Sorted by musical talent and consigned to different lives, the cousins face cold, illness, and attempted murder. Slave, servant or fine lady, each has to escape imprisonment before they can find one another, foment a revolution, and restore spring to the Land of Winter.