London

Near the end of "The Frozen Thames," a family shelters two robins to protect them from the killing cold that gripped London in the winter of 1880. When the story opens, one of the family's children is watching a robin perched on her bedpost, and he cocks his head and looks back at her.

"Somewhere downstairs the other robin is singing," author Helen Humphreys writes. "All over London, the girl thinks, all over London this very same thing is happening. Each house is a dark lantern, and each one holds the lit flicker of bird within its ribs."