House of Many Ways

Diana Wynne Jones published House of Many Ways in 2008. It is a young adult fantasy novel, and like Howl's Moving Castle and Castle in the Air it takes place in the same invented world.

Charmain Baker is the heroine. Brought up to be respectable and interested in very little beyond books, she has almost no practical knowledge and has never had to run a household, so it comes as a considerable surprise to be sent to mind the house of her great-uncle William while he is away. The building turns out to be full of spatial and temporal anomalies: the single front door can open onto the kitchen, onto the Royal Palace, or onto another period of time altogether.

Her stay fills up quickly with company and trouble. Charmain takes in a magical stray dog called Waif, meets a horrible lubbock, and shares the house with Peter, a young apprentice wizard who is as confused as she is. She tries spells out of William's library with very little idea of what she is doing, has to manage a clan of small blue Kobolds, and is drawn into a royal hunt for the money to repair the kingdom's finances, where she meets Sophie Pendragon, her son Morgan, a small child called Twinkle, and the fire demon Calcifer.