More than a century after she first met Peter Pan, Wendy is returning to Neverland.
But J M Barrie's heroine has been through some big changes since readers last encountered her – as has his magical world.
Wendy is now fully grown, a wife, mother and amateur poet. The Lost Boys, Peter's young companions, are adults too and are now known as The Old Boys. Even Nana the dog is dead, replaced by one of its descendants.
Only Peter remains unchanged. Left alone in Neverland, which has become polluted and depressing over the years, he is boyish, illiterate and "dying of boredom".
Until, that is, a new fairy called Fireflyer helps to return Wendy and The Old Boys to childhood and takes them back to Neverland. There, an excited Peter promises them "the best adventures in the world" – which is exactly what happens.
It might sound like a flight of fancy, but this is the story of Peter Pan in Scarlet, the authorised sequel to Barrie's classic play-turned-novel.
Written by the children's author Geraldine McCaughrean, the book follows the reunited "League of Pan" as it encounters Mr Ravello's circus and engages in treasure hunts and adventures every bit as exciting as the original outings.
Although the exact plot is still a mystery, McCaughrean has previously said that all of Barrie's main characters – including Tinker Bell, Captain Hook and the crocodile – will reappear.
The details were revealed by The New York Times, which obtained a copy of Peter Pan in Scarlet ahead of its publication on Oct 5.
The novel is apparently true to Barrie's original style and tone. "The darkness in Peter Pan has always been an interesting facet of his character and the dark side of people has always interested me more than bright heroic adventures," McCaughrean told the American newspaper.
"It's quite ruthless, not very politically correct. If any Lost Boy got too big, Peter culled him." Her main change was to make more of the character of Wendy.
"I wanted her to take a hand in the adventures, be a bit more of a feminist," she said. "I did not want the kind of female that hangs on Peter's every word."
Mrs McCaughrean, the author of more than 100 books and three-time winner of the Whitbread Children's Book Award, was chosen to write the sequel in 2004 after a competition held between almost 200 authors from around the world by Great Ormond Street Hospital.
The hospital holds the British literary rights to Peter Pan, and is issuing the sequel before its copyright expires next year. Under the terms of Barrie's legacy, it can never reveal how much it has made from the stories.
Great Ormond Street and the book's British publishers, Oxford University Press, said they would investigate how the manuscript had been leaked, along with the American publishers Simon & Schuster.
Great Ormond Street insisted that The New York Times article contained "only a few new details, plus some inaccuracies" but has refused to specify which aspects of the newspaper's version do or do not appear in the novel.
The hospital also hopes that the sequel's "official" status will help it eclipse the other interpretations of the Peter Pan legend published in America, where the rights to Barrie's original novel have expired.
Disney books has published two "prequels" to Barrie's classic tale, by the authors Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson, both more light-hearted and contemporary in tone than McCaughrean's sequel. Peter and the Shadow Thieves, has already sold 350,000 copies since its publication last month.
Great Ormond Street has, however, been able to postpone publication in Britain of Lost Girls, by Alan Moore.
The unashamedly pornographic novel deals with a meeting between thinly disguised grown-up versions of Wendy Darling, Lewis Carroll's Alice and Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz in a hotel in Central Europe on the eve of the First World War.
