Product Description

In 1896, in a pilgrim church in the Alps, an abandoned baby girl is found by a cook and a housemaid. They take her home, and Annika grows up in the servants' quarters of a house belonging to three eccentric Viennese professors. She is happy there but dreams of the day when her real mother will come to find her. And sure enough, one day a glamorous stranger arrives at the door. After years of guilt and searching, Annika's mother has come to claim her daughter, who is in fact a Prussian aristocrat and whose true home is a great castle. But at crumbling, spooky Spittal Annika discovers that all is not as it seems in the lives of her new-found family . . .

Eva Ibbotson’s hugely entertaining story is a timeless classic for readers young and old.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7134 in Books
• Published on: 2008-05-02
• Format: Unabridged
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 388 pages

Books for Keeps, November 2004
A magnificent piece of storytelling, which positively luxuriates in the extraordinary twists and turns of the plot.

The Times, 10 November 2004
...Involve[s] difficulties surmounted, and do[es] not patronize but won't give a child nightmares.

About the Author

Eva Ibbotson was born in Vienna, but spent her early childhood travelling backwards and forwards across Europe between the homes of her father, a scientist, and her mother, a novelist, who separated when she was three. When the Nazis came to power, her family fled to England. She lives in Newcastle, where she brought up her four children and has written the best-selling novels for both adults and children that have been published all around the world.