Shortlist year: 2010
Shortlist category: Young adult literature
Published by: Penguin Random House
Heloise lives with her godmother in an isolated cottage. Next door is a sinister museum dedicated to the memory of Mary Child.
Visitors enter it with a smile and depart with fear in their eyes. One day, Heloise finds a doll under the floorboards. Against her godmother's wishes, she keeps it. And that's when the delicate truce between Heloise and her godmother begins to unravel . . . Heloise runs away.
She journeys far, but one day she must return to uncover the secret at the heart of her being.
About the author
Cassandra Golds
Cassandra Golds was born in Sydney and grew up reading Hans Christian Andersen, C.S. Lewis and Nicholas Stuart Gray over and over again.
Her first book was accepted for publication when she was nineteen years old. She also wrote a monthly cartoon serial, illustrated by Stephen Axelsen, for the NSW School Magazine.
She sings for a hobby, has owned a map of Narnia since she was ten, and would like to be an actor if she wasn't a writer – but only if she could be in a production of Hair or Godspell.