Night after night, a ghost appears in the royal castle of Pergamontio, terrifying the princess. Mangus the Magician doesn’t believe in ghosts, but that doesn’t stop him from being charged with finding this one. The King demands that Mangus free his daughter from the torment of the ghost . . . otherwise, the magician will pay with his life. Mangus’s only hope is his faithful, street-smart servant boy, Fabrizio, who must solve the mystery of the ghost using logic and reason—and a bit of magic of his own.

Behind the Book

Avi writes:

I know where the setting for this book entered my imagination—Naples, Italy, which I once visited. But the book came about because I wanted to write a scary book that wasn’t really scary, a ghost story, that may or may not have ghosts, and a tale of magic, that might, or might not have magic. But what really makes the book fun is the relationship between Mangus the magician, who does not believe in magic, and his servant boy, Fabrizio, who does believes in magic a great deal. The prequel to this book, which tells how the two came together, is called Murder at Midnight.