Penguin Books Ltd

An exploration of human creativity. From the everyday objects in our homes to the most extraordinary new materials that will shape our future, it reveals the inner workings of the man-made world, the miracles of craft, design, engineering and ingenuity that surround us every day.

In 1939, five-year-old Jacques Austerlitz is sent to England on a Kindertransport and placed with foster parents. This childless couple promptly erase from the boy all knowledge of his identity and he grows up ignorant of his past.

Provides a tool kit for understanding the world around us. This book is about our obsession with collecting, the quest for authenticity and the creation of national identities. It's about Hitchcock's film sets and why we value imperfection. It's about fashion and technology, about politics and art.

Four seekers have arrived at the rambling old pile known as Hill House: Dr Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of psychic phenomena; Theodora, his lovely assistant; Luke, the future inheritor of the estate; and Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman with a dark past.