Etiquette & espionage

Description:

Sophronia is more interested in dismantling clocks and climbing trees than in proper manners -- and the family can only hope that company never sees her atrocious curtsy. Mrs. Temminnick is desperate for her daughter to become a proper lady. So she enrolls Sophronia in Mademoiselle Geraldine's Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality. But Sophronia soon realizes the school is not quite what her mother might have hoped. At Mademoiselle Geraldine's, young ladies learn to finish...everything. Certainly, they learn the fine arts of dance, dress, and etiquette, but they also learn to deal out death, diversion, and espionage -- in the politest possible ways, of course. Sophronia and her friends are in for a rousing first year's education.

subjects: Etiquette,  Robots,  Fiction,  Science fiction,  Boarding schools,  Schools,  History,  Espionage,  Spies,  Schools -- Fiction,  School stories,  Juvenile fiction,  Private schools,  Spy stories,  Steampunk fiction,  Deception,  Truthfulness and falsehood,  Friendship,  Intrigue,  Children's fiction,  Boarding schools, fiction,  Schools, fiction,  Etiquette, fiction,  Robots, fiction,  Great britain, history, 19th century, fiction,  Spies, fiction,  nyt:young-adult=2013-02-24,  New York Times bestseller

Places: Great Britain

Times: George VI, 1936-1952