Book description
'Ninety-eight keys, none of them labelled. Ninety-eight keys, and
they say there are ninety-nine rooms . . .what will you find in
the ninety-ninth room, I wonder?'
Maggi is delighted when her father takes a new job, renovating a
crumbling stately home in Cheshire. It's a chance to escape from the
North-East, from the predatory Doris Streeton, and perhaps from the
grief at the heart of Maggi's family. But Maggi gradually comes to
realize that their new home holds secrets far more sinister than
anything they have left behind . . .
Robert Westall was born in 1929 on Tyneside, and he grew up there
during the war. He went to the local Grammar School and then studied
Fine Art at Durham University, and Sculpture at the Slade School of
Fine Art in London. He worked as an art teacher in Cheshire and for
the Samaritans.
His first novel for children, The Machine Gunners, published in
1975, was an instant success and was awarded the Carnegie Medal. His
books have been translated into ten languages, dramatised for
television and he won the Carnegie again in 1982 for The Scarecrows,
the Smarties Prize in 1989 for Blitzcat, and the Guardian Award in
1991 for The Kingdom by the Sea. Between 1986 until his death in 1993,
he devoted himself to his writing.
