Gaslight

Eloise Williams's Gaslight is a dark theatre mystery for 10 year olds about a girl still searching Cardiff for the mum who vanished five years ago.

What happens

Nansi Howells was found half drowned at the docks the day her mother disappeared. Everything before that is a blank. Now it's 1899, she's fourteen, and she lives in a cellar room under the Empire, the theatre Sid runs.

Some nights she's Ruby Radclyffe, skipping across the stage dressed as a little girl. Other nights she's Tilly Thomas, sent to rob rich houses. Sid says it's all going towards hiring a real detective to track down her mum. (He's been saying "not yet" for a very long time.)

Then two newcomers arrive. Constance is a magician's assistant who does wicked impressions and moves straight into Nansi's tiny room. Violet Night has an act that Sid says has "something to do with dead people", and he's cast Nansi in it.

Nansi tells the story herself and she's brilliant company. She's cheeky, proud and a bit of a show-off. She checks every red-haired woman on the docks, just in case. You feel how badly she wants someone on her side, and how fast she trusts anyone who makes her laugh.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

This one gets properly frightening, and early. In the second chapter a man catches her climbing out of a window, grabs her by the hair and bangs her head against the wall. The next morning Sid strangles her until she's sure she'll die. There's a streak of her blood on his office wall afterwards. He threatens to have her locked in the asylum, like the mother he says he put there. There's some swearing too.

A reader who's upset by grown-ups hurting children could find this too much. The scariest thing in it so far isn't a ghost, it's Sid.

For a confident reader who likes their mysteries with real danger and a heroine who won't give up, it's gripping. Her Cardiff is all coal dust, fish and flickering gaslight, and Nansi's hope that her mum is alive carries you through the grim bits.

What to read next

If Nansi goes down well, there's The Tide Singer by the same author. Morwenna's family look after the dead in a small seaside town in 1895, where storm after storm has sunk the fishing boats and people are starting to blame the sea.