For Lil, life at the Squawking Mackerel inn couldn’t be more miserable. She's tasked with the sloppiest, grottiest jobs and picked on at every turn. Her only friend is Augustus Scratchy, a cantankerous crow with a habit of stealing. When the dread villain Rotten Bob Hatchet and his gang of cut-throat highwaymen begin attacking travellers on the road, things get really dire.

Joining forces with a new servant boy, Ned, and armed with the contents of the inn’s lost property cupboard, a pocket full of revolting dumplings and some knicker elastic, Lil comes up with a plot to scare off Rotten Bob. And so the legend of Ghastly Jack Crowheart the Demon Highwayman is born!