The Forbidden Library

Alice always thought fairy tales had happy endings. That - along with everything else - changed the day she met her first fairy. When Alice's father goes down in a shipwreck, she is sent to live with her uncle Geryon - an uncle she's never heard of and knows nothing about. He lives in an enormous manor with a massive library that is off-limits to Alice. But then she meets a talking cat.

Late one night Alice Creighton hears her father having an argument with a fairy - a snarling, bald beast with warts and needlelike teeth. The next day her father disappears, never to return. And Alice is sent to live with Master Geryon, an uncle she never even knew existed. Geryon has a dark, mysterious library which is strictly off-limits to Alice.

Old Readers are supposed to live forever, magically inhabiting the spaces between stories. They're not supposed to die. But they can be murdered. When an ancient Reader is killed, seemingly by his own apprentice, the hierarchy of the magical world tumbles, and its spiderweb of alliances begins to unravel. Now it's up to Alice and the remaining apprentices to sort out the mess and catch the murderer....

When Alice's mysterious Uncle Geryon sends her to help capture a rogue apprentice - a boy who has the same ability Alice has, to read himself into stories - she knows to expect a wild and unpredictable trip. But even though Alice has visited the magical realms inside libraries before, this adventure is far more dangerous. Because Torment, the magic creature holding this library together, has gone mad.

For Alice, danger threatens from inside the library as well as out. Having figured out the role her master and uncle, Geryon, played in her father's disappearance, Alice turns to Ending - the mysterious, magical giant feline and guardian of Geryon's library - for a spell to incapacitate Geryon. But, like all cats, Ending is adept at keeping secrets and Alice doesn't know the whole story. Once she traps Geryon with Ending's spell, there's no one to stop the other Readers from sending their apprentices to pillage Geryon's library.

When Alice defeated her uncle Geryon and declared war on the totalitarian ways of the Old Readers, she knew she would have a hard fight ahead. What she didn't anticipate was the ruthlessness of the Old Reader - who can control magic and enter worlds through books. All the creatures she promised to liberate and protect are being threatened, and slowly all of Alice's defenses are being worn away. So when Ending (the giant cat-like creature who guards the magical labyrinth in Geryon's library) hints at a dangerous final solution, Alice jumps at the chance.