The Spell of the Sorcerer's Skull
About this audiobook
A bookish boy searches for his missing best friend in this spooky tale by the author of The House with a Clock in Its Walls.
On a country lane in snowbound 1950s New Hampshire, a car goes skidding off the road. Professor Childermass and Johnny Dixon escape unscathed, but their car is stuck, and they are forced to walk into town. Johnny doesn’t mind. A curious young man, he has fun anytime the professor takes him out, because he’s treated like an adult. Together they’ve gotten into all sorts of supernatural scrapes, and this winter night they’ll face their toughest challenge yet.
When Childermass suddenly vanishes, Johnny is the only one who can find him. The mystery is linked to a tiny skull taken from a child’s dollhouse, which seems to have powers too terrible to guess at. With the help of a crusty old Irish priest, Johnny chases the clues to his friend’s disappearance all the way to the rocky coast of Maine, where something evil hungers for revenge.
The Johnny Dixon novels are charmingly old-school and shot through with suspense, and The Spell of the Sorcerer’s Skull may be the most chilling of them all.
About the author
John Bellairs (1938-1991) was 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; and The Spell of the Sorcerer's Skull. His stand-alone 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 a dozen novels before his untimely death in 1991.
Johnny Heller, a Golden Voice Lifetime Achievement Award Winner, has recorded over 800 audiobooks spanning every genre. He is a four-time Audie Award winner; an AudioFile Best Voice, Booklist Editor's Choice List, and Publishers Weekly Listen Up Award winner; and the winner of over thirty Earphones Awards. His national and international audiobook coaching workshops are called "game changing" by attendees. AudioFile magazine named him one of the top fifty voices of the twentieth century.
