Henry Porter

'He came on the shortest day of the year between the storms that carried the sea twenty miles inland and the great snow of that winter. But before his arrival there was an equally mysterious disappearance!' The first in a proposed trilogy, "The House of Skirl" sees Thirteen year old orphan Kim living with his elusive guardian, surly tutor, and various servants, in a grand but dilapidated old house called Skirl - the ancient home of the Drago family. When one of the servant girls goes mysteriously missing, a dark cloud descends on the house. And the arrival of a stranger in the dead of night, claiming to be a long-lost relative of the Drago family, plunges the house and Kim's life into more mystery and magic - that goes right to the heart of his family...  Read reviews at The Guardian and The Observer