The Wrath of the Grinning Ghost (Johnny Dixon) - Softcover

John Bellairs is 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.

Brad Strickland has written and cowritten forty-one novels, many of them for younger readers. He is the author of the fantasy trilogy Moon Dreams, Nul’s Quest, and Wizard’s Mole, and the creator of the popular horror novel Shadowshow. With his wife, Barbara, he has written for the Star Trek Young Adult book series, for Nickelodeon’s Are You Afraid of the Dark? book series, and for Sabrina, the Teenage Witch (Pocket Books). Both solo and with Thomas E. Fuller, he has written several books about Wishbone, public TV’s literature-loving dog. When he's not writing, he teaches English at Gainesville College in Gainesville, Georgia. He and Barbara have two children, Amy and Jonathan, and a daughter-in-law, Rebecca. They live and work in Oakwood, Georgia.

While vacationing with his father in Florida, 13-year-old Johnny finds an old, enchanted book and receives a mysterious warning from a local fortuneteller. Back home, Johnny consults his cantankerous old friend Professor Childermass. When Johnny's father becomes gravely ill, Johnny and the professor investigate and discover that the spirit of Nyarlat-Hotep, using the body of the pirate Damon Boudron, is attempting to overpower Johnny's dad in order to destroy the world. With the help of Brewster, the other-worldly falcon last seen in John Bellair's Trolley to Yesterday (1989), Johnny, his friend Fergie, and Childermass travel to Brewster's realm to destroy Boudron. Strickland's story is eerie, suspenseful, and true to the personalities and writing style of Bellairs, who began the Johnny Dixon series. As usual, the forces of good and evil figure prominently in the tale, and Johnny's friend Father Higgins assists the trio's return to the real world. This is good reading for adventure enthusiasts as well as for series fans. Kay Weisman