The Girl From The Attic

Maddy Rose lives in two worlds. A hundred years apart. In the same strange house built as an octagon. When a mysterious black cat leads her into the unknown attic, she meets Clare and his very sick sister Eva. Together Maddy and Clare jump into a money-making scheme in his uncle's dangerous soap factory to buy a cure for Eva. But an unexpected tragedy befalls them before Maddy is pulled back into her own time to confront the premature birth of her own sister. Will the skills she learned in the past help her solve the problems of the present? Can the strange shape of the house make a difference? As the Girl from the Attic, Maddy must rise to the challenges of both worlds in order to find her own place in the life of the octagon.

Thirteen-year-old Nathan is furious when his mum hauls him off to Cornwall for Christmas and then tells him they are to move there for good. He wants to be back with Dad, with his best friend, Tom, in his London life. But then he finds a cottage - and a girl. The girl in the attic. Who is she and what is the family secret that haunts her life?

1895. Alice and John MacDonald, both running from pasts that were too traumatic to face, meet by chance and stay together in a fragile world that's rife with lies and secrets. The only thing they have in common is the love for a seven-year-old child, Beatrice, whom they have raised since she was a baby. When an escaped murderer triggers a series of events that will significantly change the lives of John and Alice and jeopardize the life of their darling daughter, they must take drastic action to protect the welfare of the child. Follow John and Alice as they are forced to leave the wilds of Labrador for an isolated future in Holyrood, Newfoundland, only to have their world turned upside down when they must face the consequences of the lives they lived. As the reality of their past unfolds with disastrous outcomes, will it mean they lose Beatrice forever to the mother who has longed for the child--a child born from a vicious assault and given away by a cruel stepmother--and is now eager to make her part of her new family?

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • PEN/FAULKER AWARD WINNER • The acclaimed author of The Swimmers and When the Emperor Was Divine tells the story of a group of young women brought from Japan to San Francisco as “picture brides” a century ago in this "understated masterpiece ... that unfolds with great emotional power" (San Francisco Chronicle). In eight unforgettable sections, The Buddha in the Attic traces the extraordinary lives of these women, from their arduous journeys by boat, to their arrival in San Francisco and their tremulous first nights as new wives; from their experiences raising children who would later reject their culture and language, to the deracinating arrival of war. Julie Otsuka has written a spellbinding novel about identity and loyalty, and what it means to be an American in uncertain times.

In the bleak, forbidding house of her great-aunts, neglected twelve-year-old orphan Maggie hears ghostly voices and finds magic that awakens in her the capacity to love and be loved.

Called "a feminist classic" by Judith Shulevitz in the New York Times Book Review, this pathbreaking book of literary criticism is now reissued with a new introduction by Lisa Appignanesi that speaks to how The Madwoman in the Attic set the groundwork for subsequent generations of scholars writing about women writers, and why the book still feels fresh some four decades later. "Gilbert and Gubar have written a pivotal book, one of those after which we will never think the same again."--Carolyn G. Heilbrun, Washington Post Book World

The impetuous Flossie Jayne—a beautiful, budding artist who is handpicked by Louis Tiffany to help complete the Tiffany chapel—takes on a colorful cast of characters to transform her Chicago boarding house into a home while making a name for herself in the art world. Simultaneous.

A magic attic club book.