Sally-Anne Ruso is the great granddaughter of one of Italy's most notorious mobsters. She was raised to follow family traditions as a master thief, swindler and utter scallywag. Yet at the same time, she has ethical standards and a nagging conscience.

When she happens upon a notebook, hidden on the shelves of the university library, she realises it reveals the location of a time travel device. Its location is on an island, so she cons her boyfriend, a PhD candidate of history, into helping her retrieve the device. Her plan is to commit an act of piracy by stealing a bag of gold sovereigns from a ship that is about to become shipwrecked. Everything goes swimmingly, until the device malfunctions and they are stuck in the past on the Furneaux Group Islands. With little but their wits, and a patchy understanding of history, which has been altered putting them in an alternative time, they must work out how to get back to their own time.

However, that's not the worst of it. According to pages photocopied from the notebook, they must return to their year of departure before the full moon rises in three days' time. If they don't, the time space continuum with implode and tear a hole in the fabric of space time destroying them and their world. What can possibly go wrong? Everything.