Picking up right where The Spell of the Sorcerer’s Skull left off, this fourth book in the Johnny Dixon series finds Johnny acting very strangely. He has terrible dreams, he wakes up having sleepwalked, and he is acting mean to his friends Fergie and Professor Childermass. The spirit of the evil Zebulon Windrow has taken over Johnny’s body, and soon he is lying in a coma close to death. It is up to the professor and Fergie to save him, but that means going to the icy and dark Windrow estate, where the spirit of the evil wizard awaits them. Will the professor and Fergie get out with their lives? Will they be able to save Johnny’s? The world seems to be falling down around them. “A gothic spine-chiller, filled with suspence, witty dialogue, and unique characters.” —Booklist
John Bellairs is beloved as a master of Gothic young adult novels and fantasies. His series about the adventures of Lewis Barnavelt and his uncle Jonathan, which includes The House with a Clock in Its Walls, is a classic. He also wrote a series of novels featuring the character Johnny Dixon. Among the titles in that series are The Curse of the Blue Figurine; The Mummy, The Will, and The Crypt; The Spell of the Sorcerer’s Skull; and others. His solo novel The Face in the Frost is also regarded as a fantasy classic, and among his earlier works are St. Fidgeta and Other Parodies and The Pedant and the Shuffly. Bellairs was a prolific writer, publishing more than one dozen novels before his untimely death in 1991.
