Ibbotson, Eva

A Countess Below Stairs

By the award-winning and bestselling author of JOURNEY TO THE RIVER SEA, a novel that sings with characteristic Ibbotson warmth and wit 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 Armed with an out-of-date book on housekeeping, Anna determines to become a housemaid and she finds work at the Earl of Westerholmes crumbling but magnificent mansion. The staff and the family are sure there is something not quite right about their new maidbut she soon wins them over with her warmth and dedication. Then the young Earl returns home from the warand Anna falls hopelessly in love. But they can never be together: Rupert is engaged to the snobbish and awful Murieland anyway, Anna is only a servant. Or so everybody thinks .

A Company of Swans

Eager to escape the confines of her rigid Edwardian upbringing, Harriet Jane Morton joins a prestigious ballet troupe, a move that enables her to sample life's pleasures. Reprint. PW.

The Morning Gift

Twenty-year-old Ruth Berger is desperate. The daughter of a Jewish-Austrian professor, she was supposed to have escaped Vienna before the Nazis marched into the city. Yet the plan went completely wrong, and while her family and fiancé are waiting for her in safety, Ruth is stuck in Vienna with no way to escape. Then she encounters her father’s younger college professor, the dashing British paleontologist Quin Sommerville. Together, they strike a bargain: a marriage of convenience, to be annulled as soon as they return to safety. But dissolving the marriage proves to be more difficult than either of them thought—not the least because of the undeniable attraction Quin and Ruth share. To make matters worse, Ruth is enrolled in Quin’s university, in his very classes. Can their secret survive, or will circumstances destroy their love?

The Beasts of Clawstone Castle

When their parents go to America for the summer, Madlyn and Rollo are sent to their Great-Aunt Emily and Uncle George at Clawstone Castle, home of the famous and mysterious Wild White Cattle of Clawstone Park. Unfortunately, the castle and herd upkeep has become too much for Emily and George to manage. Determined to save the herd, Madlyn and Rollo audition a cast of ghosts to add some thrills to the castle tours. Once the haunted headliners are in place, things go swimmingly—until a rival estate cow-naps the cattle. Then it’s up to the kids and their ghostly friends to rescue the cattle and bring Clawstone back to its glorious state.

A Song for Summer

Eighteen-year-old ellen never expected the Hallendorf school to be, well, quite so unusual. After all, her life back in england with her suffragette mother and liberated aunts certainly couldn’t be called normal. but buried deep in the beautiful Austrian countryside, ellen discovers an eccentric world occupied by wild children and even wilder teachers, experimental dancers and a tortoise on wheels. And then there is the particurally intriguing, enigmatic, and very handsome Marek, part-time gardener and fencing teacher. ellen is instantly attracted to the mysterious gardener, but Hitler’s reich is already threatening their peaceful world. only when she discovers Marek’s true identity and his dangerous mission does ellen realize the depth of her feelings for him—and the danger their newfound love faces in the shadow of war.

The Star of Kazan

Eagerly-awaited new novel from the author of the bestselling Journey to the River Sea. In a tiny alpine church, on a June day in 1897, an abandoned baby girl is found by a middle-aged cook from Vienna. So begins the unusual childhood of Annika, brought up in the house of three eccentric professors by their two domestic servants. By the age of seven she can bake and ice a three-tiered cake and polish parquet floors to perfection. Her life in this golden city of music, fabulous food, and the beautiful Lippizana stallions who dance before the Emperor Franz Joseph is greatly blessed-until her unknown mother tracks her down and comes to claim her.... Here is another Ibbotson masterpiece of wonderful adventure, packed with dozens of unforgettable characters who weave their way through a faultless, intricate plot of enthralling events-sometimes hilarious, sometimes bleak, but always marvellously entertaining. It offers every reader who loved Journey to the River Sea an enchanting new world of fictional riches. It is a timeless classic, for readers young and old. - One of the biggest events in the children's publishing year, backed by a major trade and consumer promotion - Journey to the River Sea won the Smarties Gold Award, was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal, and was runner-up for the Whitbread Children's Book of the Year and the Guardian Fiction Award.

Journey to the River Sea

Sent in 1910 to live with distant relatives who own a rubber plantation along the Amazon River, English orphan Maia is excited. She believes she is in for brightly colored macaws, enormous butterflies, and "curtains of sweetly scented orchids trailing from the trees." Her British classmates warn her of man-eating alligators and wild, murderous Indians. Unfortunately, no one cautions Maia about her nasty, xenophobic cousins, who douse the house in bug spray and forbid her from venturing beyond their coiffed compound. Maia, however, is resourceful enough to find herself smack in the middle of more excitement than she ever imagined, from a mysterious "Indian" with an inheritance, to an itinerant actor dreading his impending adolescence, to a remarkable journey down the Amazon in search of the legendary giant sloth.

Eva Ibbotson, author of Dial-A- Ghost, Island of the Aunts, and other positively delightful and droll fantasies, won a Gold Award for this book in the 2001 Nestlé Smarties Book Prizes. Likable heroines, loathsome villains, and splendid adventures—-along with Kevin Hawkes's appealing ink illustrations--make Ibbotson's novels a must for every bookshelf. (Ages 9 and older) --Emilie Coulter

It is 1910Maia, orphaned at 13, travels from England to start a new life with distant relatives in Manaus, hundreds of miles up the Amazon. She is very unhappy with her bizarre new family but befriends Finn, a mysterious English boy who lives with the local Indians and shares her passion for the jungle. Then Finns past life catches up with him and they are forced to flee far upriver in a canoe, pursued by an assortment of brilliantly eccentric characters that only Eva Ibbotson could invent. Journey to the River Sea won the 2001 Smarties Prize, was shortlisted for the 2001 Whitbread Childrens Book of the Year, and was runner up for the Guardian Childrens Fiction Award.

Which Witch?

Arriman the Awful, Loather of Light and Wizard of the North, needs a wife. How else can he have a wizard baby to carry on the family tradition of blighting and smiting, blasting and wuthering? The problem is, wizards can only marry one kind of person--a witch. Arriman dreads the thought. "A great black crone with warts and blisters in unmentionable places from crashing about on her broom! You want me to sit opposite one of those every morning eating my cornflakes?" But a witch it must be, so Arriman holds a contest to decide which witch. The local witches are all atwitter over what spell they'll perform for the contest--all except Belladonna, who is, to her great shame, a white witch. She looks rather like the girl on the Clairol Herbal Essence bottle, with a sweet face and flowing blonde hair. "There was usually something in Belladonna's hair: A fledgling blackbird parked there by its mother while she went to hunt for worms, a baby squirrel wanting somewhere safe to eat its hazel nuts, or a butterfly who thought she was a lily or a rose."

Black spells are cast, enchantments are woven, and even Belladonna manages to do a little damage in this wonderfully clever 1979 book by Eva Ibbotson (of The Secret of Platform 13). Young readers will delight in the way Ibbotson glories in the ghoulish and the gory--and in her engaging characters who are kindly and fiendish all at once. Which Witch (finally reissued in the United States) begs to be read aloud, with before-bed-length chapters and lots of opportunities for funny voices. (Ages 9 and older) --Claire Dederer

A Publisher's Weekly Bestseller

WANTED: One wildly wicked witch to wed. Arriman the Awful, the handsome Wizard of the North, has decided to marry. But which witch will it be?

Arriman devises a contest: whoever performs the darkest piece of magic will become his bride. Belladonna, the smallest of the coven, wants desperately to win, but she has one problem: she's a good witch. Her spells conjure up begonias and baby birds -- not a single nest of vipers or bloodshot eyeballs. But Belladonna is in love, and she's determined to do something sinister in time for the contest. . . .

This title is included only in Juvenile 10.

The Secret of Platform 13

Odge Gribble, a young hag, joins an old wizard, a gentle fey, and a giant ogre on a journey from their magical island kingdom to London through a tunnel which opens every nine years for nine days, to try and rescue the young prince who had been stolen as an infant nine years before.

Island of the Aunts

Somewhere in the Atlantic on a mysterious island, three eccentric women care for an assortment of astonishing creatures--not just seals, fish, and gulls, but mermaids, selkies, a couple of ghosts, a very long talking worm, and a boobrie that lays eggs so large, just one will make seventy-two omelets. But caring for so many, even the magical ones, is hard work, and Etta, Coral, and Myrtle are getting older. Perhaps if they kidnapped a few sensible children to help...

Which children the "aunts" choose and what happens to them on the island make for another wildly inventive and funny read by master storyteller Eva Ibbotson.