Winterhouse

Ben Guterson's Winterhouse is a snowy mystery for 9 year olds about a girl packed off to a grand hotel for Christmas by an aunt and uncle who don't want her around.

What happens

Elizabeth Somers comes home from school to find a note taped to the front door. The house is locked. Her aunt and uncle have gone away for three weeks, and she's to catch the evening train north on her own.

She has three dollars, a plastic bag of clothes and a backpack of library books. And who's paying for the hotel? Nobody seems to know.

Then the bus pulls up at Winterhouse, and it's nothing like the dreary place she'd pictured. It's lit up like a palace beside a frozen lake, with a giant jigsaw in the lobby that two old gentlemen have been working on for two years.

Elizabeth fits a piece the moment she looks at it. (She's that kind of girl.) She adores word puzzles and anagrams, and she keeps lists in a little notepad about everything, including all the reasons she doesn't like her aunt and uncle.

Those lists are a big part of the fun. You're right inside her head, noticing things, reaching for a clever word and quietly judging the grown-ups who talk down to her.

Norbridge Falls, who owns the hotel, is the opposite of her aunt and uncle. He pulls a coin from behind her ear, never stops talking and proudly shows her an explorer's old trousers in a glass case.

Not everyone is so friendly, though. A man and woman dressed all in black stare at Elizabeth on the bus and somehow know her name. Their luggage includes a long wooden crate that looks an awful lot like a coffin. Odd things happen around Elizabeth herself too, like a gate slamming shut when nobody's touched it.

It's creepy in a delicious way rather than truly frightening. Elizabeth's parents died when she was four, which is worth knowing. That's backstory, told early and plainly, and you can feel how much she misses them.

If you've got a reader who loves a word game, a huge old building to explore and a heroine rereading Anne of Green Gables for the fifth time, this is SUCH a cosy winter read.

What to read next

And if hotels with secrets are their thing, try Thomas Taylor's Malamander next. Herbie is the Lost-and-Founder at a seaside hotel in winter, and his story begins when a girl climbs in through his window begging him to hide her.