The Dollhouse: A Ghost Story

By Charis Cotter

Book Overview

A creepy, mysterious dollhouse takes center stage in this atmospheric middle-grade mystery for fans of Doll Bones and Small Spaces . Alice's world is falling apart. Her parents are getting a divorce, and they've cancelled their yearly cottage trip -- the one thing that gets Alice through the school year. Instead, Alice and her mom are heading to some small town where Alice's mom will be a live-in nurse to a rich elderly lady. The house is huge, imposing and spooky, and everything inside is meticulously kept and perfect -- not a fun place to spend the summer. Things start to get weird when Alice finds a dollhouse in the attic that's an exact replica of the house she's living in. Then she wakes up to find a girl asleep next to her in her bed -- a girl who looks a lot like one of the dolls from the dollhouse . . . When the dollhouse starts to change when Alice isn't looking, she knows she has to solve the mystery. Who are the girls in the dollhouse? What happened to them? And what is their connection to the mean and mysterious woman who owns the house?

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0735269068
• ISBN13: 9780735269064
• Release Date: August 2021
• Publisher: Tundra Books (NY)
• Length: 360 Pages
• Weight: 1.12 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 5.7" x 8.4"
• Age Range: 9 to 12 years
• Grade Range: Grades 4 to 7

Customer Reviews

I've enjoyed other books by the author more, but this is still very good.

Reading "The Haunted Dolls' House" in The Collected Ghost Stories of M. R. James when I was a child gave me a taste for such stories. I haven't been a child in decades, but I was glad to buy The Dollhouse: A Ghost Story. Poor Alice. Her parents are getting a divorce. She's having to go with her mother to a big old house belonging to old Mrs. Bishop, who needs a nurse. Alice hits her head during the train ride to the house, so she's not sure if what she's seeing is real or caused by her injury. The house is kept in the exact style it had in 1929. In the attic there is an off-limits dollhouse that is an exact replica of the real , with dolls that are exact replicas of the people who lived there in 1929. When Alice sleeps, she dreams she is in the house as it was in 1929. Only the daughter who was called "the Fizz" can see or hear her. The dollhouse changes on its own. Alice believes it's connected to the real house. Something happened long ago that is still affecting the house. Can Alice solve the mystery? It's a good ghost story for tweens on up.