Elven and The Puzzle Box

From the author of There Was a Peranakan Woman Who Lived in a Shoe comes a story of an orphan girl who rises above discrimination to find love Twelve-year-old Elven has eleven fingers, no parents, and a skin tone that hints at murky origins. One day, she receives a wooden Puzzle Box belonging to her late mother, and an intriguing letter promising her love— if she solves it. Thus begins Elven’ s long journey to find the Puzzle Box maker. Running away from the orphanage, she reaches the town of Armora where she encounters its quirky residents and makes a new friend— the mysterious Madam Green. Ignoring signs of danger, Elven moves into her cottage on Mount Armora. But soon their idyllic life is shattered with the arrival of miners intent on extracting gold from the mountain at all costs. Elven teams up with Madam Green to stop them, drawing both into a sinister scheme with tentacles deeper than anyone can imagine. When the townsfolk accuse Madam Green of being a witch, it will take all of Elven’ s ingenuity to not just unravel the shocking truth, but ultimately reveal the secret of the Puzzle Box.

Gwen Lee is a Singapore-born, US-based author of eight children’ s books. Her award-winning work Little Cloud Wants Snow! was a recommended selection at the Read! Singapore Festival and is used by schools in the United States to educate children about weather science. Her other publications such as There Was a Peranakan Woman Who Lived in a Shoe; Elizabeth Meets the Queen: A War Heroine’ s Journey; and the Greco and Beco series have been featured by institutions such as the National Library Board, Building and Construction Authority, and Singapore Global Network in their outreach campaigns.