Set just before the first world war as the onset of conflict looms, ‘Christopher and Columbus’ tells the story of seventeen-year-old twin orphans, Anna-Rose and Anna-Felicitas as they are thrust upon their relatives by their Uncle Arthur.

Arthur, a patriot, is suspicious of their half-German heritage and worries that they may be spying. He ships the twins off to America, and on their voyage, they befriend Mr Twist.

However, Twist has not considered the pitfalls of taking the young women under his wings, especially since they cannot behave with tact and will need continued protection long after the ship docks.

In this witty and comic novel, the twins arrive in America and take on the nicknames of Christopher and Columbus, as the reader follows their adventures in a country poised for war.

A fun and uplifting novel, ‘Christopher and Columbus’ will be enjoyed by fans of ‘A Series of Unfortunate Events’. Elizabeth von Arnim was an English novelist – a cousin of the New Zealand-born writer Katherine Mansfield – born as Mary Annette Beauchamp in Australia in 1866. She married a German aristocrat and her earliest written works are set in Germany. Von Arnim launched her career as a writer with her satirical and semi-autobiographical work ‘Elizabeth and Her German Garden’, published anonymously in 1898. Although she was known by the name May in her early life, when she began writing, her success as ‘Elizabeth’ meant that her writings were ascribed to the name Elizabeth von Arnim.