The Star of Kazan written by Eva Ibbotson performed by Ruth Jones on CD (Abridged)

Annika never has a birthday – no one knows the date she was born. She celebrates her Found Day instead. For Annika was abandoned as a baby and found by a cook and a housemaid from Vienna. Her upbringing in the servants’ quarters of the house of three eccentric professors means that at an early....

age she can bake and ice a three-tier cake, and polish parquet floors to perfection. One summer's evening a very old lady comes to stay with Annika's awful neighbours. The stories of her extraordinary life as a famous dancer are spellbinding. Especially the tale of the besotted Russian count who gave her the legendary emerald, the Star of Kazan.

Then suddenly a glamorous stranger arrives at Annika’s door. Her mother, after years of guilt and searching, has come to claim her. Annika is no servant but a Prussian aristocrat whose true home is a great castle. But at crumbling, spooky Spittal she discovers that all is not as it seems in the lives of her new-found family . . . Eva Ibbotson’s hugely entertaining story is a timeless classic for listeners young and old . . .