A dark and stormy night in England

Here’s a pretty good book for your holiday enjoyment: The Uninvited Guests by Sadie Jones. I learned about it via Maureen Corrigan’s review on the NPR web site, but if you’re interested I’d suggest saving the review for later. Ms. Corrigan has a way of spilling plot elements that are best discovered during the actual reading of the book.

And this book has a few surprises, which is just one of the wonderful things about it. It’s set in a threadbare Downton Abbey-style manor house, circa 1912, where the family tries to keep up appearances despite reduced circumstances. A birthday party for the eldest daughter begins to go awry when word comes of a “dreadful” train accident nearby. It appears the family will be called upon to temporarily house the survivors.

The book starts kind of slowly, but Sadie Jones has such a great way with character and dialog that I never considered putting it down. What starts as one sort of book ends up as quite another. I won’t say more, but it’s a great ride and you won’t feel cheated at the end. Also, it’s fairly short at less than 200 pages. If you’re in need of something to read on these long nights before Christmas, you could do a lot worse than this.