Showing results by author "Eva Ibbotson" in All Categories

Beyond the everyday world of King's Cross Station lies an island of oddities and magic. When their infant Prince is stolen, the island's magical residents form a team to rescue him. The only trouble is, they can't get to him for nine years.

Spring, 1922. Tessa is a beautiful, tiny, dark-eyed princess who’s given up her duties to follow her heart and work backstage at the Viennese opera. She keeps her true identity a well-guarded secret, but when a wealthy, handsome Englishman discovers this bewitching urchin backstage, Tessa’s two lives collide - and in escaping her inheritance, she finds her destiny....

It is 1910 and Maia, tragically orphaned at 13, has been sent from England to start a new life with distant relatives in Manaus, hundreds of miles up the Amazon. She is accompanied by an eccentric and mysterious governess who has secret reasons of her own for making the journey. Both soon discover an exotic world bursting with new experiences in this highly colourful, joyous, and award-winning adventure.

In early 20th-century Vienna, Annika is raised by Ellie and Sigrid, a cook and housemaid for a household of three professors. Abandoned when she was a baby, Annika dreams of the day her mother will come back to claim her. Then one day, it happens. A glamorous woman arrives and sweeps Annika away to a crumbling castle in Germany. But there is much more to this new woman than meets the eye - and none of it is good.

Arriman the Awful, Wizard of the North, is tired of being the most evil wizard in the world so he decides he must get married and have a son to take over. His wife must be a witch with awesome powers but the organised contest has awful consequences.

Panic seizes the country when three children are seized by a gang of kidnapping aunts. But far away, on a mysterious island, the children soon realize their strange captors are not like normal criminals. In fact, Aunts Coral, Etta and Myrtle are on a secret mission. And the children have been specially chosen to help them in an extraordinary, dangerous and magical adventure…A hilarious, charming fantasy from bestselling author Eva Ibbotson, read by Susan Jameson.

Susanna Weber is the best dress maker in Imperial Vienna. Through skill and hard work, she now owns her own dress shop, looking out over the beautiful Madensky Square. To do so, she has left her past behind, if not without regret, at least resolutely. Looking around her, at her customers and friends, Susanna is aware that she has more than most - but a few small changes cause her to realize just how precarious her situation is.

When Madlyn and Rollo are sent to stay at ancient Clawstone Castle, they soon fall in love with the house and its eccentric, penniless inhabitants. There's grumpy, limping Uncle George, mousey Miss Emily, and reclusive Cousin Howard who hardly ever leaves his library. But, the children are especially enchanted by the cattle of Clawstone Park - rare and beautiful beasts, as white as snow and as wild as wolves. No one knows where they came from.

Weekly ballet classes are Harriet Morton's only escape from her intolerably dull life. So when she is chosen to join a corps de ballet which is setting off on a tour of the Amazon, she leaps at the chance to run away for good. Performing in the grand opera houses is everything Harriet dreamed of, and falling in love with an aristocratic exile makes her new life complete. Swept away by it all, she is unaware that her father and intended fiance have begun to track her down.

Anna, a young countess, has lived in the glittering city of St Petersburg all her life in an ice-blue palace overlooking the River Neva. But when revolution tears Russia apart, her now-penniless family is forced to flee to England. Armed with an out-of-date book on housekeeping, Anna determines to become a housemaid and she finds work at the Earl of Westerholme's crumbling but magnificent mansion.

Weekly ballet classes are Harriet Morton's only escape from her intolerably dull life. So when she is chosen to join a corps de ballet that is setting off on a tour of the Amazon, she leaps at the chance to run away for good.

Performing in the grand opera houses is everything Harriet dreamed of, and falling in love with an aristocratic exile makes her new life complete. But swept away by it all, she is unaware that her father and intended fiance have begun to track her down.

Ruth lives in Vienna and is wildly in love with Heini Radik, a brilliant young pianist. When Hitler’s forces invade, Ruth’s family flees to London, but she cannot get a passport. Quin, a young professor and friend of the family, visits Ruth and offers a marriage of convenience. On their return to London, Quin begins to fall desperately in love with her. But then Heini turns up.…

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. One day a glamorous stranger arrives at the door.

Ruth lives in the beautiful city of Vienna and is wildly in love with Heini Radik, a brilliant young pianist. But her world is about to change forever. When Hitler's forces invade, Ruth's family flees to London, but she is unable to get a passport. Quin, a young professor and friend of the family, visits Ruth and in an effort to bring her back to London, he offers a marriage of convenience. As Ruth throws herself into her London life, Quin begins to fall desperately in love with her.

Heckie is determined not to be just a witch. With the help of local wizards and a little boy, she sets about putting the world to rights. But then she falls under the spell of smarming, charming Mr Knapsack and all her good work is nearly undone.

"Find me a witch!" cries Arriman the Awful, feared Wizard of the North. Arriman has decided to marry. His wife must be a witch of the darkest powers - but which witch will she be? To find the most fiendish, he holds a spell-casting competition.

"Get me some ghosts," said Fulton Snoddle-Brittle. "Frightful and dangerous ghosts!" Fulton has gone to the Dial-a-Ghost agency with an evil plan. He wants to hire some truly terrifying ghosts to scare his nephew Oliver to death.

But Oliver likes ghosts. And the peculiar ones he meets at Helton Hall decide at once to help him outwit the wicked Snodde-Brittles.

The ghosts of Craggyford Castle have been happy for 500 years. But outside the world is changing. Soon there will be nothing left of their old haunts, with new factories and houses as far as a ghost can see. So they set out to find a new home.

Rupert, the young Earl of Westerholme, returns home from the war - and Anna, a housemaid, falls hopelessly in love with him. But they can never be together - Rupert is engaged to the snobbish and awful Muriel. And anyway, Anna is only a servant. Or so everybody thinks.

When Ellen Carr abandons grey, dreary London to become housekeeper at an experimental school in Austria, she soon knows she's found her calling. Swept into an idyllic world of mountains, music, eccentric teachers and wayward children, Ellen brings order and joy to all around her. But it's the handsome, mysterious gardener, Marek, who intrigues her - Marek, who has a dangerous secret. As Hitler's troops march across Europe, Ellen finds she has promises to keep, even if it means sacrificing her future happiness.