The Last Brownie of Higgle Street

Some houses keep secrets. Number Eleven keeps a promise.

Wren Tully has moved six times in four years, so she knows the truth grown-ups never say out loud: a place can pack you up and post you on before you've even learned which stair creaks. That's why she maps every new house corner by corner in her fat, much-mended notebook — because a place you've drawn in your own hand is a place that half belongs to you. And when her family lands the cheapest, crookedest, most crookedly-leaning house on Higgle Street, she makes one stubborn, fierce little vow, pressed so hard it dents three pages: This time we stay.

But Number Eleven comes with a hidden tenant. Someone tidies the stairs in the night, mends what's broken, warms the kettle with no hand near it — and sweeps every crumb into a small, neat, perfectly square pile. Someone four hundred years old, impossibly grumpy, and utterly forbidden from being thanked. His name is Bramble, he's a house-brownie, and he lives by one unbreakable rule: never, ever let the hearth go cold.

Because something hungry sleeps beneath the cellar. A hollow, wanting thing that eats the warmth out of homes and breathes cold up through a door that isn't on anyone's map. For centuries an old seal has held it down. Now a too-smiling developer is buying up Higgle Street house by house, emptying it of everything that makes a home a home — and the cold has begun to climb the stairs.

To save the house, the street, and everyone on it, one brave girl and one hopelessly grumpy spirit must rally a lane full of odd neighbours and outwit a man far hungrier than he knows — and discover the one thing strong enough to stop a hungry dark.

A cozy, big-hearted fantasy adventure for readers who love magic, mischief, and the fierce comfort of finding home. Open the door. Step inside. Stay.