Madensky Square

A whip-smart observation of the passions and tragedies behind daily life, Eva Ibbotson's Madensky Square is a classic snapshot of Viennese life before WWI.Susanna Weber's dress shop stands in the picturesque Madensky Square, a quiet little world of its own, nestled in the heart of glittering pre-war Vienna.As the winter of 1910 unfurls into spring, Susanna starts a journal about life in the Square, about the buildings and their colourful inhabitants. There's Frau Schumacher, with six daughters and a baby on the way, Professor Starsky and his menagerie of sickly reptiles, an aging bookseller, a teenage Anarchist, and little Sigi – an orphaned child prodigy forced to play the piano all day, every day.And then there's her dear friend Alice, the only person who has noticed the heartbreak that hides beneath Susanna's brisk kindness and brilliant talent . . .Discover more of Eva Ibbotson's sweeping historical romances in Magic Flutes, The Morning Gift, The Secret Countess, A Song for Summer and A Company of Swans.

Eva Ibbotson was born in Vienna in 1925 and fled to England with her family when the Nazis came to power. She became a writer while bringing up her four children in Newcastle. Her bestselling novels have been published and loved by readers around the world.Her novels for adults, all rich historical romances, convey her deep love of the arts, the Austrian countryside, and the importance of belonging.In 2001, her children's novel Journey to the River Sea won the Nestle Gold Award and was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal, the Whitbread Children's Book of the Year and the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize.Eva passed away peacefully in October 2010 at the age of eighty-five.