Winner of the 2008 Ann Connor Brimer Award.

Wait Chancellor Holden cried, and fast as a striking hawk he swooped forward and dragged me up by the front of my tunic.

Even as he swooped, I realized that in the fall, my mother's rings had tumbled out the neck of my shirt. I clutched at them, but too late. Chancellor Holden jerked the heavy chain over my head and held it swinging before them all.

After his guardian dies, Maurey is reduced from student to unpaid servant at his grammar school and bullied because of his black hair and eyes, which make him look as if he is related to the sorcerers who once inhabited the island. When it is discovered that Maurey is indeed a descendent of one of those sorcerers, or Nightwalkers, he is sentenced to be burned alive. He and his young rescuer flee for the Nightwalkers' hidden kingdom. Any reader who enjoys otherworld fantasy, or just a good adventure story, will not be able to put this book down.

If there is one book that has shaped what I think a book should do and what literature should be, medieval scholar K.V. Johansen says, it is The Lord of the Rings. Like Tolkien, she is thorough in her research. And readers will be richly rewarded. Johansen lives in a bit of another world herself; she grows exotic trees indoors, from a Tasmanian blue gum that reached ten feet to several California redwoods. She shares her jungle home in Sackville, New Brunswick, with a large dog named Pippin and several enormous goldfish.

Enter a world as vivid and inviting as Middle Earth.

In this otherworld fantasy, Maurey receives hints of his true ancestry and must flee for the land of the Nightwalkers or burn in the philosophers' fire.

After his guardian dies, Maurey is reduced from student to unpaid servant at his grammar school and bullied because of his black hair and eyes, which make him look as if he is related to the sorcerers who once inhabited the island. When it is discovered that Maurey is indeed a descendent of one of those sorcerers, or Nightwalkers, he is sentenced to be burned alive. He and his young rescuer flee for the Nightwalkers' hidden kingdom. Any reader who enjoys otherworld fantasy, or just a good adventure story, will not be able to put this book down.