After the international success with Fotbollens sista proletärer Carl Pontus Hjorthén and Martin Jönsson are back with a new story about Gothenburg. This time it is about the artists in Gothenburg in the beginning of the 20th century.
With his wife's disappearance having become the focus of an intense media circus, a man sees the spotlight turned on him when it's suspected that he may not be innocent.
When Matthew explores the 'spiral' in his grandmother's garden (a strange structure built by his late grandfather) he discovers an entrance into the magical world of 'the Shadows' where he meets his new Shadow friends, Yorrick and Alice, and begins his great adventure.
An orphaned boy raised by underground creatures called Boxtrolls comes up from the sewers and out of his box to save his family and the town from the evil exterminator, Archibald Snatcher.