A girl must stop the Boogeyman living in her home from stealing her family’s warmest memories in this “eerie and enchanting story” ( Publishers Weekly ) from the author of Flights and Chimes and Mysterious Times and The Accidental Afterlife of Thomas Marsden . When her distant aunt and uncle die, Amelia Howling is forced to move into their home when they leave her parents in charge of their children. Her parents assure her that it will be like having a grand adventure with three new siblings, but Amelia is not convinced. Luckily, the house is large, filled with nooks and crannies perfect for hiding from her cousins. But even with all the nooks and crannies, the rumbling and crumbling rooms are more sinister than they seem. The house was built years ago by a creature named Horatio, and he’s been waiting for the perfect human inhabitant: Amelia. Horatio has the power to travel through time and memories, and lures Amelia into his world. The memories of children, he told her, were the best, and Amelia agreed—her cousins were full of good memories. Until she noticed that once she and Horatio visited a memory, it was gone forever. And she had been stealing the good memories of her cousins and their parents without even noticing! Horrified and scared, Amelia lets her cousins in on her secret, and asks them for help. Together, they must race through time to recover their minds and break the perfect clockwork of the evil Calendar House. "[A]n eerie and enchanting story." ― Publishers Weekly "[Amelia’s] dilemmas will resonate with readers, while the house’s Narnia-like appeal will capture their imaginations." ― Booklist "[An] engaging, well-written fantasy. A solid middle grade fantasy with an intriguing setting and a relatable protagonist." ― School Library Journal "A just-scary-enough adventure that might send readers to investigate more about real-life "calendar houses" like Amelia's new one." ― Kirkus Reviews "Amelia's loneliness and feeling of unease are striking, thanks to Trevayne's atmospheric prose. . . .Readers will agonize with Amelia as she weighs the cost of immortality." ― Shelf Awareness Emma Trevayne is a full-time writer. She is an avid music collector, a lover of computer code languages, and a photographer. She is the author of Coda , Chorus , Flights and Chimes and Mysterious Times , and Spindrift and the Orchid . She has lived in Canada, England, and America. The House of Months and Years CHAPTER ONE A House but Not a Home THE HOUSE KNEW. IT KNEW, gazing down at her with its droopy window-eyes, that Amelia hated it. It knew with its wide, crumbling, scowling face that she was scowling right back at it, and she had a tongue she could stick out, which she did, as far as it would go. She was better than the house. It might be big and old and in the middle of a forest, but she was still better. She didn’t only have a tongue; she had shoes for kicking at the driveway and a big dictionary full of insulting words she could hurl at the bricks. Really, her glower had little to do with the house, which Amelia had to admit looked interesting—and in her opinion interesting was far more of a compliment than nice. Deep down, she knew it wasn’t the windows or the wood or the slate tiles on the roof. She didn’t want to be there, but it was more, just, well, all of it, and she would get in trouble for sticking her tongue out at her cousins. Especially since another thing she knew deep down was that this whole situation wasn’t her cousins’ fault. What had happened was very sad, and Amelia felt very sad for them, but she could be just as sad in her own room, in her own house. So this one, in front of her, was a safer target for her annoyance. You don’t like me now, little girl, but you will learn to. Come inside, the house seemed to say. In her imagination the house sounded like a wheezy, whispering old man. Amelia stretched her tongue out as far as it would go. “You’ll freeze that way,” said her mother, dragging a bursting suitcase from the car. It had dents in the side from where Amelia had been wedged against it for the whole of the long journey. Good, thought Amelia, though her mother was wrong. It was much too warm here for anything to freeze. The latticework of leaves surrounding them was lush and green, the trees holding the heat in cupped wooden hands. A month from now, perhaps, the edges of the leaves would begin to turn gold. Two months and they’d cover the ground on which Amelia Howling stood. She didn’t want to be here that long. It had already been too long. She wanted to go home. Voices came through the open door. Quiet voices. The accident had turned down the volume on Amelia’s life. The ringing phone had been the last loud noise, the call that made her mother go silent and pale. It wasn’t surprising that the silence had fallen here, too. It had started here. Or, to be precise, it had started on the road leading to the town, on a night booming with thunder