When puppeteer Marion collapses during a performance of Sleeping Beauty, her friend Fay Hubbard will carry on. But Fay already has her hands full with three demanding foster children—Apple and Beets, who have a fractious jailbird father, and sixteen-year-old Chance, who has a crush on an older guy in a band called Ghouls. And now Marion’s husband Cedric seems more interested in a drop-dead-gorgeous French teacher than with any string puppets. And who is the mysterious Skull-man who warns of death if the show goes on with one of Marion’s offbeat endings? When an autopsy reveals that Marion had swallowed a dose of deadly crushed yew—and a friend finds her half-sister dangling from a rod like a marionette, a shocked Fay goes after the killers.