Many of the stories concern characters or phenomena we have met before, in previous books set in this world. Haypotten's The Queen of Fog, not to mention the seductive but coldhearted seiche - water people who trick humans into taking their place in the river, thereby condemning them to death - one gets a sense of Nagspeake, and the larger Skidwrack area as a place of enchantment, where anything is possible. From the river serpent caldnicker, in Sullivan's The Cold Way, to the ravenous golevants in Mrs. As Maisie Cerrajeru notes, toward the beginning of the book, 'it was just as impossible to keep secrets when you told a tale as when you danced.' Sometimes spooky, sometimes sad, and always magical, the tales frequently concern mythological creatures said to inhabit the area.

The suggestion is made that each of the fifteen should share a story, in order to pass the time, and each tale told reveals something about the larger world of Nagspeake, and about the teller. Haypotten, their maid Sorcha, and the twelve guests who have come to stay as they all find themselves trapped by the rising river waters. Opening at the Blue Vein Tavern, on the banks of the changeable Skidwrack River, the story follows the inn-keeping couple, Mr. Now author Kate Milford has created that book within a book, presenting us with a collection of enchanting stories, many featuring characters we have encountered in her other work, and all woven together to creative a narrative about the fifteen storytellers themselves. These tales are said in the story to draw upon the folklore of Nagspeake, a shipping and smuggling city-state somewhere along the Middle Atlantic coast, independent from the United States, and with a magical history of its own. In Kate Milford's marvelous Greenglass House, a fantastical mystery set in an atmospheric inn overlooking the fictional city of Nagspeake, the young hero, Milo Pine, is given a collection of stories known as The Raconteur's Commonplace Book.

The raconteurs commonplace book