When Astrovo, a once-splendid country estate in Russia, is turned into a finishing school, the spirits of former inhabitants seek to reenact their lives.
The author of a number of children's novels, many of them works of historical fiction set in Russia or Yugoslavia, Mara Kay was (according to the dust-jacket blurb of The Burning Candle) "of Russian extraction, was brought up in Yugoslavia, but has lived in America since 1950."