Once a Queen: A Novel (The Carrick Hall Novels)

A mysterious manor house hides the keys to shocking family secrets--and rapidly fading portals to other worlds--in the richly woven opener to bestselling author Sarah Arthur's young adult fantasy series.

When fourteen-year-old American Eva Joyce unexpectedly finds herself spending the summer at the mysterious manor house of the English grandmother she's never met, troubling questions arise: Why have her parents been so long estranged from her grandmother? What secrets are the manor staff--and the house itself--hiding?

When odd things start happening in the gardens at night, Eva turns to the elderly housekeeper, the gardener, and the gardener's grandson, Frankie, for answers. Astonishingly, they all seem to believe that Eva's favorite childhood fairy tales are true--and that her grandmother was once a queen in another world. But her grandmother's heart is closed to the beauty and pain of the past. Now it's up to Eva to discover what really happened. 

Can Eva's family's relationships be restored? Do portals to other worlds exist, or are they closed for good? As she seeks answers, Eva finds herself unraveling dangerous secrets and wrestling with grief for a vanishing childhood, all while facing the fear that growing up means giving up fairy tales forever.