WHEN Jenny May Butler goes missing, the elusive young girl at the center of Irish author Cecelia Ahern's latest novel There's No Place Like Here sets an extraordinary tale in motion.

Many years after Jenny May's disappearance, Sandy Shortt, who still lives across the street from the missing girl who was once her nemesis, finds herself becoming more and more obsessed with missing things and people.

Now 34, Sandy has made an entire career out of tracking missing people. Her determination to know where everything is only grows over time and leads to a life dedicated to searching and often finding (but not often enough for her liking).

When she's eventually hired by Jack Ruttle to find his younger brother, Sandy travels to Limerick to meet her new client. But shortly before their arranged meeting she finds herself sidetracked in a strange land filled with people and things who went missing from all over the world.

Unable to find their way back home again, the missing have formed their own extended community, which they show to the disorientated Sandy. And Sandy, who has always remained remote from those she should be closest to, discovers that finding the missing people and things she's spent her whole life looking for doesn't make up for all the things she's been missing out on in her own life.

It's a premise that's as simple as it is clever, and Ahern's new book mines it for every last shred of romance and heartache. The things that are missing from your life, Sandy discovers, can completely blind you to all that you actually possess. Ahern doesn't belabor the point, but the lesson is clear.

With her own agency dedicated to finding missing persons, Sandy's personal quest to remove all doubt from life initially looks like it might succeed. But with every unsolved case, Sandy is plagued with alarming new questions:

Where do missing people go? Are they alive or dead? Did they actually intend to disappear?

And then, suddenly, when Sandy finds that she herself has gone missing, she discovers all the answers she's ever searched for in a magical place where all lost things and people go. The only catch is that this knowledge has come at too steep a price.

Talking about the book and the impulse that inspired her to write it, Ahern recently told the Irish Voice that it's a creative departure for her.

"I do think it's a much darker book than my previous ones, that's certainly true. Even though I'm writing about a magical world that doesn't exist, it's really more about the character's head," she said.

"All of my stories involve learning about yourself. Sandy wanders off the path of her own life and finds herself in a world she doesn't recognize. She doesn't know how she got there - or why she's there - and so she has to figure out who she was in order to find her way back to life again. It's the biggest metaphor I've ever written."

In finding everything that has gone missing Sandy has to face up to her biggest ever challenge - finding herself. It's a process that certainly resonates for the 26-year-old Irish author, whose wildly successful career now includes film, with the recent release of the movie version of her first novel P.S. I Love You, television (her ABC sitcom Samantha Who? has been nominated for a Golden Globe award), and publishing branches.

Since the title of Ahern's new book echoes Dorothy's famous "there's no place like home" line in The Wizard of Oz - and her young heroine is also swept up and carried off to a strange land where she has to remember who she was to become herself once again - it's tempting to see the parallels in Ahern's own life.

"A lot of people are asking me to attend international premieres of my new film. Others are asking when my next book will be released," Ahern says.

"I'm constantly being asked for new ideas for the television show. It's a fairy tale life and there's absolutely no explanation for it, but I have to decide what projects to follow and what to say no to.

"I don't want to overload people or myself, you know? But it's a whirlwind not unlike the one that sweeps up Sandy in the novel. The trick is always remembering who you are."

Written for her diehard fans and almost certain to lead to another major film adaptation, There's No Place Like Here is Ahern's most heartfelt offering since her debut P.S. I Love You.

The good news is that her new book boasts an even stronger storyline than the book that made her name.

There's No Place Like Here is published by Harper Collins.