Lissa Evans

"When Noel Bostock--aged ten, no family--is evacuated from London to escape the Nazi bombardment, he lands in a suburb northwest of the city with Vera Sedge a thirty-six-year-old widow drowning in debts and dependents. Always desperate for money, she's unscrupulous about how she gets it. Noel's mourning his godmother, Mattie, a former suffragette. Wise beyond his years and raised with a disdain for authority and an eclectic attitude toward education,...

It's late 1944. In a large house next to Hampstead Heath, Vee Sedge is barely scraping by with a herd of lodgers to feed and her young charge Noel, almost fifteen now, to clothe and educate. When she witnesses an accident and finds herself in court, the repercussions are both unexpectedly marvelous and potentially disastrous. Because Vee is not actually the person she's pretending to be, and neither is Noel.

Moving away from everything familiar to live in a new house, ten-year-old Stuart Horten reluctantly befriends the annoying triplets next door and is swept up in a magical quest to find his great-uncle Tony, a famous magician who disappeared along with his fantastical workshop.

During the bombing of London in 1940, a brave film crew makes a movie to boost the country's morale and inspire America to join the war.