One of the rarest books in existence is the 1865 printing of Lewis Carroll’s Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Sir John Tenniel, the illustrator, so disliked how they turned out they were recalled to be replaced by a new printing. All but around 50 were returned and destroyed, and of those 50 fewer than half survive.

Adam Verlain knows all about this; he’s a library archivist for a university in London, and books are his life. But when that library acquires a newly discovered copy of The Alice ‘65, he declines the opportunity to travel to Los Angeles to pick it up. He has sworn never to leave his careful, cloistered world because his father was robbed and killed on a similar trip. He only agrees to go when he is told the book will be brought to him at the airport, meaning he will be surrounded by security.

However, from the moment he boards the plane, things start to go wrong. Then he meets the amazingly beautiful, amazingly persuasive Casey Blanchard, the movie star who inherited The Alice '65, and the worst happens -- she will not let him have the book unless he accompanies her to a premier of her latest film for reasons that...well, seem quite odd.

The university wants that book, so Adam is forced to go along...sending him careening into a chaotic world of too-cool artists, drill-sergeant stylists, mistaken identity, hysterical fans, Hollywood royalty, their courtiers and minions, maniacal LA drivers, an outlandish party, a drowning pool, a love-struck wild animal on a homemade veldt, 25 cans of salmon...and the horrible realization he’s falling heal over heels in love with a woman every man in the world desires but who could never love him back.

Or could she?