The Cabinet of Wonders

Petra Kronos has a happy, simple life. But it’s never been ordinary.

She has a tin spider named Astrophil who likes to hide in her snarled hair. Her best friend can trap lightning inside a glass sphere. Petra also has a father in faraway Prague who is able to move metal with his mind. He has been commissioned by the prince of Bohemia to build the world’s finest astronomical clock. Petra’s life is forever changed when, one day, her father returns home- blind. The prince has stolen his eyes, enchanted them, and wears them. But why?

Petra doesn’t know, but she knows this: she will go to Prague, sneak into Salamander Castle, and steal her father’s eyes back. Joining forces with Neel, whose fingers extend into invisible ghosts that pick locks and pockets, Petra finds that many people in the castle are not what they seem, and that her father’s clock has powers capable of destroying their world.

Excerpt

Click here to read the first chapter of The Cabinet of Wonders. This is copyrighted, so please don’t reproduce it in any way because that would be a) illegal and b) not very nice.

Teacher’s Guide to Cabinet

Macmillan has put together a guide to teaching The Cabinet of Wonders. Here is the HTML version, and here is the PDF. I’ll be putting together something myself sometime soon.

Signed Books

Would you like a signed copy of The Cabinet of Wonders? You can get one by calling, ordering online, or visiting Anderson’s Bookshop in Naperville, IL; The Book Stall in Winnetka, IL; McNally Jackson Books in New York City, NY; Books of Wonder in New York City, NY; Shakespeare & Co. (Lexington and 68th) in New York City, NY; Shakespeare & Co. (Hillel Place) in Brooklyn, NY; The Barnes & Noble at Union Square in New York City, NY; Harvard Bookstore in Cambridge, MA; Curious George & Friends Bookstore in Cambridge, MA; or Barnes & Noble at Boston University in Boston, MA. Watch this space for updates about bookstores that carry signed copies of my novel.

Foreign Editions

The Cabinet of Wonders will be published in French by Albin Michel, in German by Bertelsmann, in Chinese by Yilin Press, in Dutch by Lemniscaat, and in Italian by Il Castoro. I don’t yet know the exact dates of the publications of these translations. There might be more foreign editions to come, so if you don’t see your favorite language listed here now, check back later.

The Kronos Chronicles: Book II

There will be a sequel to The Cabinet of Wonders. The second novel in the series is called The Celestial Globe, and will be published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in August 2009.

Book Expo Interview

I was interviewed about The Cabinet of Wonders at Book Expo of America. If you’d like to listen to a brief podcast of that interview, click here. If you’d like to download it, click here.