It's the worst birthday of Marnie McBride's life. She half-heartedly blows out the 11 candles on her birthday cake and makes a wish. It doesn't matter that she knows it can't come true. What she wants, more than anything, is for her Mum to come back. She's 11 years old today, and she's never felt so lost and alone Marnie doesn't know it yet, but it's her fate to be touched by dangerous and irresistible magic. She's about to set off on an epic quest, a perilous adventure with the Shoebox Zoo, a set of marvellous carved animals who, to Marnie's amazement and delight come magically to life before her very eyes. They're comically incompetent, cantankerously obstructive and absolutely NOT to be trusted. Yet their quest will become Marnie's quest: to follow a twisting trail of clues, puzzles and riddles, and find the lost Book of Forbidden Knowledge. This novelisation of the first series follows Marnie's quest through the ancient city of Edinburgh and across Scotland.