The Hand of the Necromancer (Johnny Dixon)
Grade 5-8?Thirteen-year-old Johnny Dixon is back in this new adventure written by Strickland in the manner of John Bellairs. It's summer in the 1950s, and Johnny, as always, is living in Duston Heights, MA. He is able to get a job at the Gudge Museum with the help of his friend, Professor Childermass, and the professor's donation of a collection of bizarre artifacts made by the evil wizard Esdrias Blackleash during the time of the Salem witch trials. When Mattheus Mergal shows up from Boston looking to steal the collection's wooden hand, the story's pace speeds up, suspense escalates, and the supernatural fun begins. Complete with a haunted house, nightmares, wild storms, snakes, near-death by lightning, and even Johnny's imprisonment in a small, decorative snow globe, the story of Mergal's intent to raise his dead ancestor, the self-styled Emperor of the World, is stylistically a treat as well, full of foreshadowing and figurative language. Just as Duston Heights attracts eerie people like magnets, so will young pre-Stephen King fans be attracted to this spellbinding tale.?Connie Tyrrell Burns, Mahoney Middle School, South Portland, MECopyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.