Excerpt:

A tall house loomed before Dinah. She stood at the gate, trying to make out what it really looked like, but its features were blurred in the gloom. So she had to rely on her imagination and saw narrow lancet windows and the great oak door of a castle.

On either side of the wild lawn, trees swept from the wall to the house. They stood in rows, dense evergreens that whispered and covered the garden with shadows. Once a wide path had led from the gate, but weeds had cracked the paving stones and a tide of silky moss lapped at the neat edging. Dinah approached the house by hopping onto the clear patches of stone, telling herself she would drown if she trod on the moss.

Dinah's mother, Rosalie, unlocked the front door. A moment later light swept into the garden, but the house remained faceless and mysterious, still a castle. And now, above the roof, moonlight silvered a bank of clouds, turning them into snowcapped mountains.

"Come on, love." Her mother's tired voice drifted down to her.

But Dinah stood enthralled. Ever since she could remember, they had wandered between rented or borrowed rooms, sometimes staying for a month with Auntie June or Gran. Once Dinah had lost her mother altogether and been taken into foster care. But now they had a house, a castle of their own. She began to mount the five worn steps up to the front door and noticed a row of rusty palings that half concealed a basement window. Jumping from the steps to investigate this hidden room, Dinah felt her foot strike something hard that seemed to split in two. She picked up the head of a bird, and when she retrieved the second piece of stone, she found that the two halves made a small griffin, an eagle's head and wings with the body and hindquarters of a lion.

"Griffin's Castle," Dinah murmured.