It is about a girl who is summoned home to her family`s ancestral Rocky Mountain hideaway for her mothers birthday. 30 years ago, her parents believed that they had scattered to pieces of the Montglane service around the world, burying with these chessmen the secrets of the power that comes with possessing them. But Alexandra arrives to find that her mother is missing and that a series of strategically placed clues, followed swiftly by the unexpected arrival of a mysterious assortment of houseguests, indicates that something sinister is afoot. When she inadvertently discovers from her aunt, the chess grandmaster Lily Rad, that the most powerful piece of Charlemagne's service has suddenly resurfaced and the Game has begun again, Alexandra is swept into a journey that takes her from Colorado to the Russian wilderness and at last into too the heart of her own hometown: Washington,D.C.