My Dirty Little Book of Stolen Time by Liz Jensen

Softcover published by Bloombury 2007

Charlotte Schleswig, the delightful narrator of Liz Jensen's latest novel, supports herself and the lumpen Fru Schleswig (who may or may not be her mother) as a ** in 1890s Copenhagen. While she is no small success at the trade, she leaps at a new job opportunity for herself and Fru Schleswig, as cleaning ladies for the wealthy widow Krak. But mysteries abound at Fru Krak's dark old mansion. The basement appears to be haunted, townspeople claim to have seen the dead Professor Krak walking the streets as a ghost, and there are stories of desperate souls who paid the professor a visit and never emerged. In fact, as Charlotte will discover, there is a simple explanation for all this: the basement is home to a time machine. When their cunning investigations land them in trouble, Charlotte and Fru Schleswig find themselves catapulted through time and space to modern-day London, and there their adventures truly begin.