Lian Tanner has been dynamited while scuba diving and arrested while busking. She once spent a week in the jungles of Papua New Guinea, hunting for a Japanese soldier left over from the Second World War. Nowadays she lives by the beach in southern Tasmania with a large fluffy tomcat called Harry-le-beau.

With no one on their side but a cat, a ghost, and a chicken who has forgotten her true identity, the four children must use all their wits – and all their magic – to defeat the Harshman before he becomes unstoppable.