Anne of Athelhampton and the Riddle of the Apes

A Tudor intrigue: feisty 12-year old Anne battles betrayal within her own family as she searches the secret rooms behind the paneling of Athelhampton Hall for clues to solve the Riddle. Why has her grasping cousin Young John bought her a pet ape from the Dorsetshire pirates?

Plucked from her dreary school-room lessons into an adult world, she slips into the rush-lit murk of the Great Hall at night dressed as a boy-actor to defeat one threat. But she discovers that to save herself requires more of others than she is prepared to ask.

This is the first of the Anne of Athelhampton trilogy, which is inspired by true historical events and characters from England's Dorsetshire in the 1500s. It is written by Giles Keating, who lives in Athelhampton's Tudor rooms just as Anne did five hundred years ago and who welcomes visitors to see the secret passages that she discovered, and the symbols in stone that she searched out to solve the Riddle.