The Otherwhere Emporium

The Otherwhere Emporium by Ross MacKenzie is a magic-shop fantasy for 9 year olds, and it begins with a mum who only nipped out for spaghetti.

What happens

Susan Feather lives in Elmbank, near Glasgow. A van soaks her at the traffic lights. She gets home, unpacks the shopping and realises she's forgotten the one thing she went for.

So out she goes again. And halfway along the street she stops, because there is a shop where there has never been a shop.

Midnight-black brickwork that sparkles in the last of the light. A narrow archway topped with a seven-pointed star. A golden sign, gone faded, above the door.

She knows it's impossible. She touches the bricks anyway. They feel real, and strangely familiar, and then the warm air comes out to meet her smelling of chocolate, spices and new books, and in she goes.

MacKenzie is very good at want. Inside there are diamonds and pocket watches and daggers with bone handles, a polar bear to stroke, a tank of fish that come up and nibble your fingers.

There's also a voice. Deep, silky, coming from everywhere at once. It knows Susan's name. It knows she's a single parent, that money is tight, that her daughter wants the same trainers as everyone else. It rolls a real gold coin across the floor and tells her to keep it.

You'll want to shout at her to leave.

Especially once the other voice starts. A shrunken leathery head hangs on a string above the red curtain, and it has managed to work its sewn-up lips loose long enough to tell her to get out, and not to go through any of the doors. Then the threads pull tight again.

Be ready for that first chapter. A shrunken human head with its mouth sewn shut is a strong image for a nine year old, and the scarier thing underneath is watching a good mum get flattered and bribed away from her own daughter. There's no blood in it. It's the creeping sort of frightening, and for a reader who enjoys that, it's a brilliant hook. For one who doesn't, it'll be too much before page ten.

After that the story belongs to Mirren and a girl called Lucy, and to the man who has taken the shop over, top hat and all, under the name Vindictus Sharpe.

What to read next

You will want to start earlier, mind you. The shop has an owner named Daniel who is missing by the time this one opens, and the first Nowhere Emporium book is where an orphan boy walks in off a Glasgow street, gets taken on as an apprentice and learns what is behind all those doors.