Marabel: or, The Great Exception

FINALIST IN THE WHISTLER INDEPENDENT SPIRIT AWARDS 2022!!

MARABEL is “a tale of sheer delight. This fresh fantasy shimmers with sunny wit and warm-hearted charm. Take flight with the irrepressible Marabel on her magical mission for King and Country. You may never want to come home.”
– Barbara Kyle, bestselling author of the Thornleigh Saga novels and The Man From Spirit Creek

"MARABEL recaptures the magic of books written in a bygone age of such novels as The Secret Garden." - Grant Robson, Looking for the Postman book review

"5 out of 5 stars!" - Reedsy

How did one prickly, imperious schoolgirl—not particularly fond of children—become London’s most original nanny?

The Great War is over, but Marabel's father still has not come home. Soon to graduate from her mother's School for White-Blouse Professions in London, Marabel misses him dearly. Otherwise her ambition is to become a country postmistress where she need not deal with other people.

Then the King sends her on a quest. Her mother gives her a magic heirloom and Marabel—dragging her 10-year-old brother Thomas with her—flies through time and space to retrieve the soldier who won the Great War's greatest medal. She is to bring him to a royal celebration at Stonehenge—in only two weeks!

So many monarchs to contend with: the King wants Marabel to bring back storied legends to help him celebrate. King Cobra from the London Zoo wants Marabel to free the animals. Angus the West Highland terrier wants to dethrone King Cobra and become King of the Beasts. And handsome artist Bharat Gupta wants to save Marabel from the mystery man following them.

* But why is her father hiding the unknown soldier behind the medal?
* And how do Marabel and Bharat end up on trial for treason?

What she learns and how she comes of age makes Marabel leave behind the tedium of sorting other peoples’ letters to become a prickly, imperious—and magical—nanny.

A “marvelous hodgepodge of ideas.”
- Kirkus Reviews

BARBARA WADE ROSE is a former journalist and winner of the Magazines Canada Gold Award and the Science in Society Journalism Award. She worked as San Francisco correspondent for Maclean’s and wrote for the Globe and Mail, the New York Times, Saturday Night, Chatelaine, Books in Canada and many national magazines. She is the author of BUDGE: What happened to Canada’s King of Film, and The Priest, the Witch & the Poltergeist in print and on Audible.com. She lives in Toronto.