Flavia Letton, the daughter of a police inspector, is enrolled in the Chalet School. Despite every effort being made to protect her true identity from her father's world of crime, criminals manage to track her down, bringing danger not only to Flavia, but to the whole school.

Inspired by a vacation to the Austrian Alps, Elinor M. Brent-Dyer wrote The School at the Chalet, launching a series that would span more than 60 books. The series follows the adventures of a boarding school set in the picturesque Swiss Alps. The series begins with The School at the Chalet (1925), where readers are introduced to Miss Madge Bettany, a young woman who decides to start a school for girls in the Swiss mountains. The series then chronicles the growth and evolution of the school, as well as the trials and triumphs of its students.

The revered Brazilian songwriter and novelist “has breathed the story of a whole country into a single, unforgettable man with a soul as big as Brazil” (Nicole Krauss, author of Forest Dark). As Eulálio d’Assumpção lies dying in a Brazilian public hospital, his daughter and the attending nurses are treated—whether they like it or not—to his last, rambling monologue. Ribald, hectoring, and occasionally delusional, Eulálio reflects on his past, present, and future—on his privileged, plantation-owning family; his father’s philandering with beautiful French whores; his own half-hearted career as a weapons dealer; the eventual decline of the family fortune; and his passionate courtship of the wife who would later abandon him. Through Eulálio’s journey across the twists and turns of his own fragmented memories, Buarque conjures an evocative portrait of a man’s life and love, while bringing to life the broad sweep of Brazilian history. At once jubilant and painfully nostalgic, playful and devastatingly urgent, readers of the award-winning Spilt Milk will find themselves “in the hands of a master storyteller” (The Plain Dealer). “In Spilt Milk [Buarque] confronts the themes that make Brazil squirm, from the stain of slavery to the inferiority complex the country has historically felt when it compares itself to Europe.” —The New York Times “Lovely details and a fine sense of place . . . Echoing Sebald’s Rings of Saturn . . . There’s plenty to like.” —Publishers Weekly “One of the saddest love stories, and one of the truest.” —Nicole Krauss

Elinor Brent-Dyer's Chalet School books have been popular for decades, and the characters and events introduced in the series have continued in present day fiction. At the beginning of Gay from China at the Chalet School, we learn that several of the Chalet School mistresses, including Miss Annersley and Miss Wilson, have been hurt in a road accident. Miss Annersley, the Headmistress of the Chalet School, is the most severely injured, and it is over a year before she returns to the school. What happened in that year? Hilda Annersley: Headmistress answers that question. Starting from the accident itself, Hilda Annersley's background and character, develops in detail, filling in many of the gaps in her history... her childhood and upbringing, the start of her friendship with Miss Wilson, and her experiences as a Headmistress in Austria after the Anschluss.