Johnny Dixon and Professor Childermass are visiting a New Hampshire inn, and inside that inn is a clock. It’s called the Childermass Clock. Inside the clock there is a tiny dollhouse room, an exact replica of the professor’s childhood home. And on one of the shelves in that tiny room is a tiny skull. Inside that skull is something evil. In this third Johnny Dixon mystery, Johnny takes the skull to try to solve the murder of the professor’s granduncle, but when he does, it unleashes dark forces that take the professor away. To get him back, Johnny and his friends Fergie and Father Higgins must race to the deserted islands off the coast of Maine. Little do they know the terrifying danger that awaits them there . . . “Is there no end to the suspense John Bellairs can create? . . . This is among his best and that’s really saying something.” —School Library Journal
“Brace yourself for a wild ride.” —Kirkus Reviews
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.
