Anna Francis lives in a tall old house with her father and her doll Penelope. She is a refugee, a piece of flotsam washed up in England by the tides of the Great War. Once upon a time, she had a mother and a brother, and they all lived together in the most beautiful city in the world. But that is all gone now, and only to her doll does she ever speak of it. And then one winter day, she finds an interloper in the attic. A boy named Luca with yellow eyes, who is as alone as she is. That day, she’ll lose everything in her life, and find the only real friend she may ever know.

“Very good indeed. A great Oxford novel; and the wonderfully conjured period detail…The characters are expertly written: they feel absolutely real, and the real-ness evocatively off sets the deftly handled supernatural elements.” ADAM ROBERTS