The Watcher in the Shadows - Hardcover

Carlos Ruiz Zafón is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Prince of Mist and the international phenomena The Shadow of the Wind and The Angel's Game. His work has been published in more than fifty countries and honored with numerous awards. He divides his time between Barcelona, Spain, and Los Angeles, California.

First published in Spain in 1995, this early work from Zafón hits all the gothic horror bases: creepy castles, foreboding caves, haunted lighthouses, murky woods, masked balls, and just about everything else you might hope for. Mostly, though, this is a cunning twist on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde—with a little bit of ventriloquist-dummy horror thrown in for good measure. Fourteen-year-old Irene’s penniless mother has just won the jackpot: she’s been hired to keep house at Cravenmoore, the estate of reclusive toymaker Lazarus Jann. He’s a kindly eccentric, but the grinning automatons populating his castle carry an air of menace. Just as frightening is the personless shadow giving chase to Irene and her little brother. And what of the legend of the woman who drowned in the lagoon? Though there is probably one mystery too many here, Zafón cuts between his various characters with cinematic skill, and his habit of telling stories within the narrative is put to spine-tingling use, just as it was with The Midnight Palace (2011). Good, solid scares. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Zafón is still cruising off the might of the international best-sellers The Shadow of the Wind (2004) and The Angel’s Game (2009). Anything he does for quite a while will garner a good deal of interest. Grades 8-11. --Daniel Kraus