The Girl Who Won a Castle

Aunt Kez is missing. When socially awkward teenager Ingrid Macbeth embarks on a road trip with friend Patrick to find her aunt, collecting people and cluse along the way, they soon discover that the biggest clue had been with them all along.

Ingrid lives with elderly Aunt Kez whose friends, the gals, love nothing better than a sherry and a rollmop on a Friday evening. Ingrid has always missed social cues, and has no real friends, other than the girls she hangs around with at the markets and boot sales where Kez sells retro ornaments, real retro, not that fake stuff. But everything changes when one of the gals gives Ingrid a mobile phone and she discovers that her dad is alive and living in Scotland. Desperate to know what happened to her parents she messages him, but then Kez goes missing.

Patrick Badu, whose parents sell pulled pork wraps at the markets and boot sales, wants to help Ingrid find her missing aunt. So, when they discover an empty envelope under Ingrid's bed labelled WINNING TICKET, and an address in Sudbury for someone Ingrid has never heard of, they set off on a road trip, joined by science geek Nat, the school head girl Julia Simpson, and baby Angelica. Each stop they make, one step behind the missing woman, reveals another branch of the family tree that Kez has kept Ingrid blissfully unaware of.

This is a coming-of-age story with a twist, a tale of new friendships, young love, and courage, and the discovery that people are not always who we think they are.