Showing results by author "Eva Ibbotson" in All Categories

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.

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.

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.

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 Armed with an out-of-date book on housekeeping, Anna determines to become a housemaid and she finds work at the Earl of Westerholme's crumbling but magnificent mansion.

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.…

Deep in the Himalayas, the daughter of an English earl is kidnapped by a huge hairy monster. Agatha Farlingham is introduced to a family of motherless yetis and devotes her life to their upbringing. She teaches them to talk, tells them stories and insists on polite manners. But as time passes, tourists and yeti-hunters arrive in to the mountains. Agatha knows that there is one place where they would be protected - at her home in England. So begins a hugely entertaining road trip half way across the world...

Hal's parents refuse to consider a dog. Then they discover Easy Pets, a dog-rental agency. Terrier Fleck arrives on Hal's birthday, but when Hal discovers that his dog must be returned, he runs away. A large reward is offered for the missing boy, and soon they are being chased across the country. Helped by a travelling circus and sympathetic children from an orphanage, they race for their freedom.

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.

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.

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.

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....

Maia, an orphan, can't wait to reach her distant relatives a thousand miles up the Amazon. She imagines a loving family with whom she will share great adventures. Instead she finds two spiteful cousins who see the jungle as the enemy and refuse to go outdoors.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

A thrilling novel from the bes-tselling children's author. When a Hag, an orphan boy and a troll called Ulf get sent to rescue a princess from an ogre, they expect it to be a fairly standard magical mission. But the ogre is depressed and the princess doesn't want to be rescued. The Norns who rule their fates decide to take things in hand - will the Ogre meet a bloody end, or will he get a happy ending?

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.

Alex McBuff doesn't want to sell the family castle. An orphan, its ghosts have been like a family to him. But it is falling to pieces through lack of money. A Texan billionaire offers Alex $500,000, but on condition that it is ghost free.

Under Platform 13 at Kings Cross Station there is a secret door that leads to a magical island. It appears only once every nine years. And when it opens, four mysterious figures step into the streets of London. A wizard, an ogre, a fey, and a young hag have come to find the prince of their kingdom, stolen as a baby nine years before.