Price won the annual Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book by a British subject.

[3] Farrar, Straus, and Giroux published a US edition within the calendar year, entitled The Ghost Drum: A Cat's Tale.

The Czar Guidon, the latest in a long line of ruthless rulers, has married by the counsel of his advisers, but he is deathly afraid of being overthrown by his son.

The Czarevich spends many years alone before his psychic cries of distress reach Chingis, and then, with the help of the ghost drum, she finds and secretly spirits him away.

Meanwhile, the Czar dies, and fighting breaks out in the palace as his sister Margaretta ascends to the throne: she determines to find her nephew, intending to kill him.

The four spirits are able to leave the ghost world because they have not eaten or drunk anything while there, expressing a common belief found in western myth.

[5] The School Library Journal described the language of the novel as 'lyrical and poetic", saying that Susan Price "weaves together many common folkloric themes into an original story which is both charmingly new and hauntingly familiar".