Amanda/Miranda

This captivating young adult historical fiction novel will transport readers back to the early twentieth century and the ill-fated voyage of the Titanic. “Your future lies further off . . . It lies beyond a mountain of ice where you will die and live again.” To Mary Cooke, these words from a weird wisewoman meant little as she travels to Whitwell Hall to become a servant. Although this was 1911—and even on the Isle of Wight smoke from the long liners traveling to America blackened the horizon, bringing a sense that the bustling future was elbowing aside the Victorian past—her own future in domestic service seemed set. She did not anticipate, however, the manipulative and whirlwind force of her young mistress Amanda Whitewell, who begins by rechristening Mary to “Miranda.” From there, Amanda goes on to decree her duties as a kind of doppelganger and lynchpin to a plot that Amanda devises to marry an American who can maintain her lavish lifestyle. Amanda—spirited, beautiful, manipulative, restless and lustful. Miranda—awakening, dutiful, desiring, determined, and finally vengeful. These two locked in uncanny resemblance are the yin and yang, the upstairs and downstairs of a novel as romantic as the Edwardian twilight and as fated as the passengers who embark from Southhampton for New York on a certain April morning in 1912.