Twin sisters Keziah and Tilly Lovell are identical, except that Tilly hasn’t grown a single inch since she was five. Coerced into promoting their father’s quack elixir as they tour the country fairgrounds, at the age of fifteen the girls are sold to a mysterious Italian known as ‘Captain’. 

Theo is an orphan raised by his grandfather, Lord Seabrook, a man who is obsessed with freaks and curiosities … particularly the human kind. Always resenting his grandson for his mother’s death in childbirth, when Seabrook remarries and a new heir has been produced, Theo is told to leave his home without a penny to his name. He finds employment in London at Dr Summerwell’s Museum of Anatomy, and it is there he meets with Captain, and his theatrical ‘family’ of performers, freaks, and outcasts. But, it is Theo’s fascination with both Tilly and Keziah that will lead all three of them into a web of jeopardy …