When Richard Nevis quit the rat race, being pursued to the Owl House in Nieu Bethesda by an assassin with a books fetish was not what he had in mind. The trouble started while Richard was volunteering at a shelter for mistreated tokoloshes. There he befriended Lun, one of these often misunderstood creatures. But Richard and Lun come to the unwelcome attention of both a brutal villain and Cape Town’s most dangerous criminal mastermind. Teaming up with a potent duo of midwives, who are members of a secret order equally adept at delivering infants and performing martial arts, Richard and Lun have to race across the Karoo in a quest to open an ancient metal box to stay alive.