I’m looking for a book that I read about 15 years ago that was already well aged at the time I read it, probably from the 70s or 80s. It was on a classroom bookshelf in my elementary school. It’s about a girl who I think moves… from the city to the country with her mother for sure, possibly her father has died. She isn’t too pleased about the move but eventually while exploring their new large country house she discovers the servants passage and a room where it appears an old lady used to live, I think. She also likes to play in the apple cellar, befriends someone at school, and there is a not well-liked older fellow who lives in a dark small house who I think may have lived in their house at one point? I may totally wrong on some of these things because I was young when I read it, but I think I’m right.
Thanks!
I may be way off but check out a description for The Velvet Room, by Zilpha Keatley Snyder and see if it sounds familiar.
That’s not it, but thank you. 🙂
This description brings to mind The Secret Summer of L.E.B. by Barbara Wallace for some reason. My recollection is that she plays with the very unpopular boy in an abandoned house near her home and that they make up stories abut the woman who used to own her new house. But it’s been ages since I read it and none of the descriptions online say anything about those elements.
That isn’t what I’m looking for, but thank you. 🙂
Possibly Mary Calhoun’s ‘Katie John’? The father does not die, but an elderly relative dies and leaves the family the old house. The rest of the plot is quite similar to what you describe IIRC. If the book includes an episode where the heroine gets stuck in an old dumb-waiter, then it’s this book.
I don’t think this is it. Thank you though!