Eva Ibbotson

Set against the backdrop of gathering war, A Song for Summer is an unforgettable love story from master storyteller Eva Ibbotson. 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...

Under Platform 13 at Kings Cross Station there is a secret door… It appears only once every nine years. 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...

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...

Read by actress Ruth Jones, Eva Ibbotson's hugely entertaining The Star of Kazan is a timeless classic for listeners young and old. 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'...

Arriman has decided to marry. His wife must be a witch of the darkest powers… To find the most fiendish, he holds a spell-casting competition. Glamorous Olympia performs the Symphony of Death and conjures up a thousand plague-bearing rats. The magic of gentle Belladonna, the white witch, goes...

Instead of being ghastly and skeletal as a bloodcurlingly fearsome ghost, he's pink and fluffy, like a summer cloud. He longs to be like his brother, who's a Screaming Skull. Or his father, who has stumps for legs and a sword through his chest. Or even his cousins who are vampire bats. Poor...

Anna, a young countess, has lived in the glittering city of St Petersburg all her life. But when revolution tears Russia apart, her 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 Armed with an out-of-date book on housekeeping, Anna determines to become a housemaid and she finds work at the Earl of...

Fulton Snodde-Brittles 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. ‘The Shriekers’ are the most violent and sickening sceptres the agency has, but a mix-up means the kind Wilkinson ghosts are sent...

The Dragonfly Pool by Eva Ibbotson is an exciting story of friendship and determination during the Second World War, from the award-winning author of Journey to the River Sea and The Star of Kazan. Illustrated with a gorgeous updated cover by Katie Hickey. Tally Hamilton is furious to hear she...

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...

Music is her passion… but love is her destiny 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 idenity a well-guarded secret, but when a wealthy, handsome Englishman...

An Amazon adventure set in the wilderness of Brazil, Journey to the River Sea is filled with mystery and memorable characters, read by actress Imelda Staunton. It is 1910 and Maia, tragically orphaned at thirteen, has been sent from England to start a new life with distant relatives in Manaus...

‘So your spell changed Basil into a bulldog?’ gasped Daniel. ‘Yes,’ said Heckie. ‘I adore bulldogs.’ Heckie is a good witch who wants to make the world a better place. So, with her Toe of Transformation and her Knuckle of Power she turns unpleasant people into animals. But to her...

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...

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...

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...

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...

‘I will buy your castle,’ declared Hiram C. Hopgood. ‘But only if there are no ghosts!’ Alex MacBuff can't afford to keep his beloved Castle Carra - and an American millionaire has made him an offer he can't refuse. But the castle is full of ghosts! There's Krok the hairy Viking warrior...

Under Platform thirteen at King's 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...

Three children have been kidnapped by some mad aunts and panic is spreading. But Myrtle, Coral and Etta are far from killers - they need the children to help them in a caring mission. The secret island where they live is a sanctuary for wonderful creatures - mermaids, selkies, the boobrie bird...