By Ben Guterson
A lonely orphan is sent to a grand, snowbound hotel for the holidays, where the puzzles she loves turn out to guard a real and dangerous secret.
Elizabeth's dreary aunt and uncle pack her off alone to a place called Winterhouse for winter break, and it turns out to be an enormous, magical hotel full of the exact things she adores: a vast library, word ladders, anagrams, and puzzles tucked into every corner. She makes a friend, Freddy, who loves puzzles as much as she does. But there's a mysterious book that seems to want her, a sinister couple watching her every move, and a dark family secret coiled at the heart of Winterhouse, and Elizabeth's knack for codes is the only thing that can untangle it. Each chapter even opens with a word puzzle to solve.
This one wraps the puzzles a code-lover craves inside a deliciously atmospheric mystery. It's a touch longer and darker than a cozy puzzle book, with genuine dread threaded through the magic, so it suits a confident reader ready for a story with some shadow in it. The setting alone, a snowbound hotel full of secrets, is the kind a child wants to live inside, and there are two more books to do exactly that.