In this retelling of "Sleeping Beauty," Alice seems destined to lead a princess's life--except for the frightening curse that dreaded Aunt Violette bestowed at her christening: She will die at the age of eighteen. Although she lives, something horrible happens on her eighteenth birthday. And as a result, Alice falls into a trancelike state and refuses to speak to anyone. Will she ever recover?

In a scene that echoes "Rapunzel," Megan looks down from her tower room at a cloistered all-girls boarding school in England and observes the arrival of the new laboratory assistant, Simon Findlay.

As soon as their eyes meet, their love blossoms--and Simon begins to scale the scaffolding into the tower room for clandestine trysts. But when Dorothy, the school's science teacher and Megan's guardian, discovers the young couple's affair, Megan's sheltered world is shattered forever.

In a tale that mirrors "Snow White," eighteen-year-old Bella is leading a carefree bohemian lifestyle the summer before college, living and singing with a band in London and Paris. But over the course of a few weeks, she finds herself in danger more than once--and she can't help but suspect the two mysterious women who remind her of her jealous stepmother, Marjorie.