If you had lived in Hamburg in the fourteenth century, or Venice in the ninth century, or Damascus in the second century, you might have looked up from what you were doing and glimpsed - just for a second - a strange procession rushing past and out of sight. There were, at different times, a little girl, a flock of sheep, shepherds, angels, a Roman governor and the Emperor Augustus, and they were hurrying to Bethlehem to see the Christ-child.The little girl was Elisabet Hansen, who disappeared from Norway at Christmas in 1948. Years later, a young boy called Joachim opens the 24 doors of a magic Advent calendar and pieces together Elisabet's story - how she was taken on an astonishing journey, not just from Norway to Bethlehem but back through two thousand years of history.Like Jostein Gaarder's hugely popular Sophie's World and The Solitaire Mystery, The Christmas Mystery is an enthralling story-within-a-story, full of surprises. It is written with an enquiring open-mindedness and a sense of wonder that startles the reader into looking at the story of Christmas with fresh eyes.