Nella is at first mystified by the closed world of the Brandt household, but as she uncovers its secrets she realizes the escalating dangers that await them all. The Miniaturist was a Sunday Times number 1 bestseller in both hardback and paperback, and a New York Times bestseller. It is to be furnished by an elusive miniaturist, whose tiny creations mirror their real-life counterparts in unexpected ways. Only later does Johannes appear and present her with an extraordinary wedding gift: a cabinet-sized replica of their home. Burton’s inspiration for The Miniaturist was a dollhouse that the author saw on display in Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum. She has come from the country to begin a new life as the wife of illustrious merchant trader Johannes Brandt, but instead she is met by his sharp-tongued sister, Marin. Dolls house of Petronella Oortman, Anonymous, c.1686-c.1710, Rijksmuseum. On an autumn day in 1686, eighteen-year-old Nella Oortman knocks at the door of a grand house in the wealthiest quarter of Amsterdam. Winner of the Specsavers National Book Award and Waterstones Book of the Year.īeautiful, intoxicating and filled with heart-pounding suspense, Jessie Burton's historical novel set in Amsterdam, The Miniaturist, is a story of love and obsession, betrayal and retribution, appearance and truth. The phenomenal number one bestseller and a major BBC TV series. The Miniaturist was an efficient genre exercise atmospheric, well paced, with a delicate tease of the supernatural that, in its closing pages, broadened into something larger.

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