Chrestomanci [Abridged]

Anthony Head reads this spellbinding story collection, featuring Chrestomanci and many familiar friends and worlds. Four stories featuring the marvellous, enigmatic and embroidered-dressing-gowned enchanter, Chrestomanci!

Everybody says that Gwendolyn Chant is a gifted witch with astonishing powers, so it suits her enormously when she is taken to live in Chrestomanci Castle. Her brother Eric (better known as Cat) is not so keen, for he has no talent for magic at all.However, life with the great enchanter is not what either of them expects and sparks begin to fly!Winner of the Guardian Award.

Glorious new rejacket of a Diana Wynne Jones favourite, featuring Chrestomanci – now a book with extra bits!The Dukedom of Caprona is a place where music is enchantment and spells are as slippery as spaghetti. The magical business is run by two families - the Montanas and the Petrocchis - and they are deadly rivals. So when all the spells start going wrong, they naturally blame each other.

Glorious new rejacket of a Diana Wynne Jones favourite, featuring Chrestomanci – now a book with extra bits! SOMEONE IN THIS CLASS IS A WITCH. When the note, written in ordinary ballpoint, turns up in the homework books Mr Crossley is marking, he is very upset. For this is Larwood House, a school for witch-orphans, where witchcraft is utterly forbidden. And yet magic keeps breaking out all over the place - like measles! The last thing they need is a visit from the Divisional Inquisitor.

Discovering that he has nine lives and is destined to be the next ‘Chrestomanci’ is not part of Christopher’s plans for the future: he’d much rather play cricket and wander around his secret dream worlds. But he soon finds that destiny is difficult to avoid, and that having more than the usual number of lives is pretty inconvenient - especially when you lose them as easily as he does!

Conrad is young, good at heart, and yet is apparently suffering from the effects of such bad karma that there is nothing in his future but terrible things. Unless he can alter his circumstances – well, quite frankly, he is DOOMED. Conrad is sent in disguise to Stallery Mansion, to infiltrate the magical fortress that has power over the whole town of Stallchester, and to discover the identity of the person who is affecting his Fate so badly. Then he has to kill that person. But can any plan really be that simple and straightforward?