Nella, a country girl, comes to Amsterdam in 1686 to live with her new husband, a wealthy merchant. The household is not what she expected. The husband is kind but distant, his sister is a menacing and drearily Calvinistic Mrs Danvers; the servants – an ex-orphan and a black ex-slave from Dahomey – are enigmatic. Nella is startled and a little insulted when her new husband, Johannes Brandt, gives her a splendid dolls’ house, a model of their own fine dwelling on the Herengracht. She finds a maker of miniatures to provide some furnishings for the little house, and then things get mysteriouser and mysteriouser. The atmosphere is terrific. The reader is right there in bustling golden-age Amsterdam, with the feel and smells of the city, the frozen gracht, the dark house with