Mortimer Folchart

Mortimer Folchart (Mo), a bookbinder, has such a beautiful voice that it can bring characters out of books when he reads aloud. He discovered his dangerous gift by accident when he was reading a story called Inkheart to his wife Resa and daughter Meggie. Several characters, including the evil Capricorn and some of his followers, came out of it into our world - and Resa vanished into the world of the book. Meggie, only three at the time, can't even remember her mother.

Nine years later the fire-eater Dustfinger, one of the Inkheart characters and desperately homesick for his own world, visits Mo and Meggie (now twelve years old) to warn them that Capricorn is looking for all copies of the book to destroy them, so that no one can ever move between the two worlds again by reading from it. He is after the copy that Mo still has, and he also wants to force Mo to read treasure out of books for him.

Capricorn and his criminal gang have made an Italian village their headquarters, and when Dustfinger treacherously tells them where to find Mo, he is kidnapped and taken there. Meggie, her great-aunt Elinor ( a book collector with a fine libary ) and the repentant Dustfinger join forces to rescue him. But they no longer have the book that might help Dustfinger to get home and Mo to find his wife at last. With a new friend - Farid, a boy read accidentally out of the Arabian Nights by Mo - they track down the author of Inkheart, old Fenoglio, but his own copied have also been stolen. Although a single copy is left, it is in the hands of Capricorn and his with0like mother Mortola, After many more perilous adventures, Fenoglio and Meggies end up as captives back in Capricorn's village. Meggie, who has inherited her father's unusual talent, is to be made to read Capricorn's ally, a terrible creature known as the Shadow, out of the remaining copy of Inkheart, But with the help of Fenoglio, who writes new words to add to the story, she and Mo turn tables and Capricorn falls dead. Fenoglio himself disappears into the Inkworld in exchange for the Shadow. With Dustfinger's help Resa, who spent years in the Inkworld serving Capricorn and Mortola and lost her voice in passing between the two worlds, is found again. Reunited, the Folcharts all go home to Elinor's house.