Jonathan Stroud

When the dead come back to haunt the living, Lockwood and Co. step in . . . For more than fifty years, the country has been affected by a horrifying epidemic of ghosts. A number of Psychic Investigations Agencies have sprung up to destroy the dangerous apparitions. Lucy Carlyle, a talented young agent, arrives in London hoping for a notable career. Instead she finds herself joining the smallest most ramshackle agency in the city, run by the charismatic...

Bored with everyday chores and dreaming of long-ago heroes, teenaged Halli Sveinsson devotes himself to practical jokes but when a trick he plays on Ragnor of the House of Hakonsson sets off a chain of events that alter the course of his life forever, he is forced to leave home and set out on a hero's quest ill-prepared.

Wise-cracking djinni Bartimaeus finds himself at the court of King Solomon with an unpleasant master, a sinister servant, and King Solomon's magic ring.

In their continuing adventures, magician's apprentice Nathaniel, now fourteen years old, and the djinni Bartimaeus travel to Prague to locate the source of a golem's power before it destroys London.