cover image Midnight Is a Place

Midnight Is a Place

Joan Aiken. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH), $17.95 (292pp) ISBN 978-0-618-19625-8

A host of reissues find young people stuck between a rock and a hard place. First published in 1974 and set in 19th-century England, Midnight Is a Place by Joan Aiken stars Lucas Bell, who lives with his guardian Sir Randolph Grimsby in a lonely old house called Midnight Court. When an unfamiliar carriage delivers a girl to their doorstep, Lucas thinks he finally has a companion-but she is not what he had in mind, and a twist of fate leaves the children adrift on the streets.