Once a Queen

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.

"A fresh, delightful new tale for our wonder-hungry era."--National Book Award nominee Mitali Perkins

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, she soon discovers that her family, the manor staff, and even the house itself are hiding secrets.

With odd things happening in the gardens at night, Eva embarks on a search for answers. Astonishingly, she learns that the Hall's staff believe portals to other worlds exist--though hidden and steadily disappearing--and that Eva's grandmother was once a queen in one of those worlds. 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--and to decide if it's possible that her favorite childhood fairy tales are true. As she starts unraveling the dangerous secrets around the grandmother who is more than she appears, Eva begins to wonder if she, too, is more than she understood herself to be.

Sarah Arthur is a fun-loving speaker and the author of a dozen books for teens and adults, including the bestselling Walking with Frodo: A Devotional Journey Through The Lord of the Rings. Among other nerdy adventures, she has served as preliminary fiction judge for Christianity Today’s Book Awards, was a founding board member of the annual C. S. Lewis Festival in northern Michigan, and co-directs the Madeleine L’Engle Writing Retreats.