Philippa's mother, the children's book author Susan Lawson, dies of ovarian cancer. Susan's books centered around a little girl named Pip, based on Philippa. Pip travels through a door to a fairy world where she goes on adventures. After her mother's death, Philippa takes part in a documentary about her mother, which draws renewed attention to her mother's stories and Philippa's role as her mother's muse. Now, Philippa has given up her job as an actor on a daytime television show and is returning to the Payne house — the broken-down house by a pond that inspired her mother's stories. Philippa has used all her money to buy the house and she wants to know if its magic is as real as she knew it to be as a young girl. When she and her mother lived there, they lived in the caretaker's cottage and their food source was unreliable. Money was always scarce. But Philippa had this other world, on the other side of an overgrown door. When she arrives at the house, Philippa heads to the overgrown door, to finally know for good whether or not all the magic was real. She reaches for the door and pushes it open. An excerpt from _Pip Returns to Fairyland, _by Philippa Lawson, describes Pip returning to the magic world, where her fairy friend Hyacinth has been waiting. They walk off into the world together, on a quest to find and reunite with their friends.