Margaret's about to find out that truth is stranger than fiction.
Margaret always knew that she and her family were a little strange. After all, she did do her grade six science project on a pack of killer Chihuahuas. And Margaret's mother never talks about anything anymore - not since the mysterious drowning death of Margaret's father three years earlier. Then Margaret's mother takes Margaret and her little sister, Sophie, to an old abandoned mansion and places a "For Sale by Owner" sign in the front yard. But who could have lived there?
Convinced that the mansion is somehow linked to her father's death and her mother's silence, Margaret returns to the spooky old house alone, determined to make sense of three clues: a swimming medal, a key, and a strange, hand-written comic book about a boy who turned into a rat.
With the help of Boyd, the lonely, comic-book-obsessed boy next door, she discovers that truth can be stranger than fiction.