The Keepers of Tumblewell

Ned Tovey has lived in eleven houses, and he has a rule about all of them: don't unpack, don't finish the map, and never, ever let yourself love a place you're only going to leave. It's the only family law the Toveys have ever needed. You can't miss a place you never let yourself love.

Then Great-aunt Bee — whom he met exactly once, when he was four — dies and leaves him Tumblewell: the draughtiest, dampest, most magnificent falling-down house in all of England. It leans like a tall thin man caught mid-tumble. Its garden has eaten the fence. And on the day Ned arrives with his mum and her spreadsheet marked FIX & SELL, the house sits at the end of the lane in the grey rain and, he could swear, watches them come.

Bee has left notes taped to everything. Fill the kettle first thing, every morning. Light the fire by seven — the house likes it. Clear the well-grate before the storms. And, low by the hearth, near a coin-sized hole worn smooth by a hundred years of touching: Leave the sixpence be.

Because Tumblewell is not empty. Behind the skirting boards live the Keepers — a hidden folk no taller than a teaspoon, who ride beetles, quote ancient treaties, sneeze indignantly, and keep the whole house breathing on firelight and laughter. They are also frozen in a bitter feud that has lasted a hundred cold years.

Now the old well is rising. A storm is gathering. Something long-toothed is circling in the dark water below. The house is slated for the bulldozers by spring — and to save the home they all share, a lonely, guarded boy and a divided little nation must attempt the hardest, bravest thing there is: to go first, and to trust.

Warm, wry, and quietly magical, told in Ned's watchful, map-drawing voice, this is a story for anyone who has ever longed for somewhere to stay.

Step inside Tumblewell. And don't mind the beetles.