Little

In 1761 a tiny odd-looking girl named Marie is born in a village in Switzerland. After the death of her parents she is apprenticed to an eccentric wax sculptor and whisked off to the seamy streets of Paris where they meet a domineering widow and her quiet pale son. Together they convert an abandoned monkey house into an exhibition hall for wax heads and the spectacle becomes a sensation. As word of her artistic talent spreads Marie is called to Versailles where she tutors a princess and saves Marie Antoinette in childbirth. But outside the palace walls Paris is roiling. The revolutionary mob is demanding heads and . . . at the wax museum heads are what they do. In the tradition of Gregory Maguire's Wicked and Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus Edward Carey's Little is a darkly endearing cavalcade of a novel--a story of art class determination and how we hold on to what we love.