No.40 Norham Gardens, Oxford, is the home of Clare Mayfield, her two aged aunts and two lodgers. The house is a huge Victorian monstrosity, with rooms all full of old furniture, old papers, old clothes, memorabilia - it is like a living museum.
Clare discovers in a junk room the vividly painted shield which her great-grandfather, an eminent anthropologist, had brought back from New Guinea. She becomes obsessed with its past and determined to find out more about its strange tribal origins.
Dreams begin to haunt her - dreams of another country, another culture, another time, and of shadowy people whom she feels are watching her. Who are they, and what do they want?

This book is part of a book series called Puffin .

This book has been graded for interest at 9-11 years.

There are 304 pages in this book. This book was published 2016 by Penguin Books Ltd .

Penelope Lively was born in Cairo Egypt. She came to England when she was 12 years old. She went to school in Sussex and studied at Oxford. She has written many award winning adult and children's books and now lives in London. She has four grandchildren.