The Star of Kazan

After twelve-year-old Annika, a foundling living in late nineteenth-century Vienna, inherits a trunk of costume jewelry, a woman claiming to be her aristocratic mother arrives and takes her to live in a strangely decrepit mansion in Germany.“Ibbotson, master of the ‘poor orphan makes good’ tale, offers another eminently satisfying example… [R]eaders will long remember the admirable Annika and cheer her eventual, well-deserved, triumph.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred reviewEva Ibbotson, born Maria Charlotte Michelle Wiesner (1925–2010), was an Austrian-born British novelist, known for her children's books. Some of her novels for adults have been successfully reissued for the young adult market in recent years. For the historical novel Journey to the River Sea (Macmillan, 2001), she won the Smarties Prize in category 9–11 years, garnered unusual commendation as runner-up for the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, and made the Carnegie Medal, Whitbread Award, and Blue Peter Book Award shortlists. She was a finalist for the 2010 Guardian Children's Fiction Prize at the time of her death. Her last book, The Abominables, was one of eight books on the longlist for the same award in 2012.