Author(s): Django Wexler

Children

One night, fourteen-year-old Alice Creighton hears her father having an argument and sees that the person he is arguing with is not a person at all but a fairy (though not one of the beautiful kind of fairies; this one is bald, with warts and needle-like teeth). The creature is threatening her father, insisting he accept a mysterious offer or else...The next day, Alice's dad goes off on a business trip and his ship sinks off South America, leaving Alice all alone in the world. She is convinced that something about her father's death is awry. She is sent to live with Mr. Geryon, an eccentric old man who was an associate of her father. Mr. Geryon lives in an enormous estate with a separate library, a place she is told to never visit. In her curiosity, Alice disobeys the order and, winding her way through the dark and massive library, sees another fairy creature. She becomes convinced that to find her father, she'll need to find out who these creatures are and who gives them their orders. In her adventures, Alice makes a new friend - a talking cat named Ashes - and learns that she has a rare gift: she is a Reader.
Like a sorcerer, Readers are able to enter new worlds through the special books in Geryon's library. However, these other worlds can be extremely dangerous: to survive and escape them, the magical beings that inhabit them must be defeated. Searching for the answers to her father's disappearance, she must go to the most dangerous world of all, the one where the dragon lives. But even someone as gifted as Alice is not ready for this world. No one is...