Eva Ibbotson's hugely entertaining The Star of Kazan is a timeless classic for readers 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' quarters of a house belonging to three eccentric Viennese professors. She is happy there, but dreams of the day when her real mother will come to find her.

And sure enough, one day a glamorous stranger arrives at the door. After years of guilt and searching, Annika's mother has come to claim her daughter, who is in fact a Prussian aristocrat whose true home is a great castle. But at crumbling, spooky Spittal, Annika discovers that all is not as it seems in the lives of her new-found family . . .

This book was recognised by the Nestle Smarties Book Award. It was recognised by the Carnegie Award. The CILIP Carnegie Medal is awarded by childrens librarians for an outstanding book written in English for children and young people.

There are 400 pages in this book. This book was published 2014 by Pan Macmillan .

Eva Ibbotson was born in Vienna, in Austria, and now lives in England. She has a daughter and three sons.