The Ring of Solomon

is essentially an excellent children’s thriller – full of fun, action, tension and magic … it could easily be the talk of the playground’ Lindsey Fraser, GLASGOW SUNDAY HERALD
    ‘Both the djinn and the boy exist in a world described with great imaginative detail … The action-packed adventures of Nathaniel and Bartimaeus … are sustained over nearly 500 pages by the immensely enjoyable characterisation. The narrative slips skilfully from first person to third and back and Bartimaeus’s voice is laugh-out-loud sassy, while Nathaniel’s story has an engaging poignancy as he tries to prove himself in a world in which he has always been despised’ Nicolette Jones, SUNDAY TIMES
    ‘Terrific stuff’ MAIL ON SUNDAY
    ‘This book gripped me like a magnet to metal …
I don’t have a favourite part of it because it was all brilliant. I can’t wait for the next book. I would recommend the story to anyone aged 9 years and over’
Sam Baker (aged 10) IPSWICH

THE AMULET
OF SAMARKAND
    A young magician’s apprentice, Nathaniel, secretly summons the irascible 5,000-year-old djinni, Bartimaeus, to do his bidding. Bartimaeus must steal the powerful Amulet of Samarkand from the master magician Simon Lovelace, and before long Nathaniel and Bartimaeus are caught up in a terrifying flood of magical intrigue, rebellion and murder.
    Turn over for an exciting extract!

Bartimaeus
    1
    T he temperature of the room dropped fast. Ice formed on the curtains and crusted thickly around the lights in the ceiling. The glowing filaments in each bulb shrank and dimmed, while the candles that sprang from every available surface like a colony of toadstools had their wicks snuffed out. The darkened room filled with a yellow, choking cloud of brimstone, in which indistinct black shadows writhed and roiled. From far away came the sound of many voices screaming. A pressure was suddenly applied to the door that led to the landing. It bulged inwards, the timbers groaning. Footsteps from invisible feet came pattering across the floorboards and invisible mouths whispered wicked things from behind the bed and under the desk.
    The sulphur cloud contracted into a thick column of smoke that vomited forth thin tendrils; they licked the air like tongues before withdrawing. The column hung above the middle of the pentacle, bubbling ever upwards against the ceiling like the cloud of an erupting volcano. There was a barely perceptible pause. Then two yellow staring eyes materialized in the heart of the smoke.
    Hey, it was his first time. I wanted to scare him.
    And I did, too. The dark-haired boy stood in a pentacle of his own, smaller, filled with different runes, a metre away from the main one. He was pale as a corpse, shaking like a dead leaf in a high wind. His teeth rattled in his shivering jaw. Beads of sweat dripped from his brow, turning to ice as they fell through the air. They tinkled with the sound of hailstones on the floor.
    All well and good, but so what? I mean, he looked about twelve years old. Wide-eyed, hollow-cheeked. There’s not that much satisfaction to be had from scaring the pants off a scrawny kid. 1
    So I floated and waited, hoping he wasn’t going to take too long to get round to the dismissing spell. To keep myself occupied I made blue flames lick up around the inner edges of the pentacle, as if they were seeking a way to get out and nab him. All hokum, of course. I’d already checked and the seal was drawn well enough. No spelling mistakes anywhere, unfortunately.
    At last it looked as if the urchin was plucking up the courage to speak. I guessed this by a stammering about his lips that didn’t seem to be induced by pure fear alone. I let the blue fire die away to be replaced by a foul smell.
    The kid spoke. Very squeakily.
    ‘I charge you … to … to …’ Get on with it! ‘… t-t-tell me your n-name.’
    That’s usually how they start, the young ones. Meaningless waffle. He knew and I knew that he knew my name already; otherwise how could he have summoned me in the first place? You need the right words, the right actions and most of all the right name. I mean, it’s not like hailing a cab – you don’t get just anybody when you call.
    I chose a rich, deep, dark chocolatey sort of voice, the kind that resounds from everywhere and nowhere and makes the hairs stand up on the back of inexperienced necks.
    ‘ BARTIMAEUS .’
    I saw the kid give a strangled kind of gulp when he heard the word. Good – he