Eleven-year-old Portia and her family return with cousin Julian to the site they visited the previous summer, this time to take possession of a large Victorian house, unoccupied for fifty years and full of treasures and secrets.

Pod, Homily, and Arrietty Clock -- the miniature Borrowers -- depend for their livelihood on the "human beans" whose cottage they live in. So when they discover that their humans are moving away, the Borrowers are forced to find a new home and a new family to borrow from. With the help of the wild Borrower boy Spiller, they make a harrowing journey down the cottage drain in a soap dish and are soon living in a teakettle by a river. But the poor Borrowers...

Driven out of their cozy house by the rat catcher, the Borrowers find themselves homeless. Worse, they are lost and alone in a frightening new world: the outdoors. Nearly everything outside -- cows, moths, field mice, cold weather -- is a life-threatening danger for the Borrowers. But as they bravely journey across country in search of a new home and learn how to survive in the wild, Pod, Homily, and their daughter, Arrietty, discover that the world...

Portia and her cousin Julian discover adventure in a hidden colony of forgotten summer houses on the shores of a swampy lake.