- Adventure
- The Secret Lake collection
- Ages 8–12
The Secret Lake
Part of the collectionThe Secret Lake→A gentle, page-turning time-travel series — a hidden tunnel, a secret lake, and friendships forged across a hundred years, growing richer and more mysterious with each book.
- Books3 / 3
- Arcs1
- Span2011–2024
- StatusOngoing
The series
At a glance.
The three-book Secret Lake series by Karen Inglis follows siblings Stella and Tom, who discover a rowing boat buried beneath a grassy mound and a tunnel that opens onto a hidden lake — and, stepping through, find themselves in their own house and garden almost a century earlier. Book by book the stakes grow, from a summer-holiday puzzle in the first, to a race-against-time rescue when a friend from the past falls ill, to a tightly plotted Edwardian country-house mystery in the third. The series keeps its short chapters, real puzzles and warm friendships-across-time throughout, growing longer and more intricate as readers move through it. Gentle at heart but genuinely page-turning, it rewards children who fall for the first book and want something meatier next.
A gentle, page-turning time-travel series — a hidden tunnel, a secret lake, and friendships forged across a hundred years, growing richer and more mysterious with each book.
Best read in publication order (1, 2, 3): each book builds on the friendships and history established before it, and the third rewards knowing the first two.
One arc
The shape of the series.
- INarrative arcBooks 1–3 · 2011–2024Moderate sensitivity
The Secret Lake
Stella and Tom slip through a hidden tunnel into the Edwardian past and back again.
The three books form one continuing time-slip story. In the first, Stella and Tom follow a neighbour's vanishing dog to a buried boat and a tunnel that carries them almost a hundred years into the past, where they befriend Lucy and Jack and help solve a mystery across time. The second reopens the tunnel when their Edwardian friend Emma falls dangerously ill and the only cure lies in the future, raising the stakes and the length. The third, winner of the 2025 UK Selfies Children's Book Award, sends the children back to 1913 and a grand estate for a tightly plotted country-house mystery, with a larger cast and a genuine whodunit. Warm friendships and real puzzles run through all three, deepening as the series goes on.
Fit check
Right for your reader?
Where the series lands by age
- 1
- 3
- 5
- 7
- 9
- 11
- 13
- 15
- 17
- 19
- Best fit · 8–12
- Read aloud · 7–11
- Independent · 8–12
Reluctant-reader friendliness
High
Read-aloud quality
Strong
Adult crossover
Low
Grows with the reader
Designed to
Sensitivity envelope
Moderate overall, and consistent.
Content notes
- Illness or disability
Where it sits
In conversation with other series.
Similar in feel
Different shelves, same wavelength.
- Tom's Midnight Garden →
About the author