Johnny Dixon

Living with his grandparents gives Johnny Dixon a lot of time to find trouble. Or adventure. Or is it both? In this, the first Johnny Dixon mystery, our young hero hears the spine-tingling story of Father Baart, a madman who haunts the town's church. At first, Johnny does not believe in ghosts, but when he takes a scroll and a small Egyptian figurine from the church basement, all that changes. Soon, a mysterious stranger gives him a ring, and Johnny plunges headlong into a terrifying adventure. Along with his new friend Professor Childermass, Johnny races to solve the mystery of this very real ghost before another life is lost.

Picking up right where The Spell of the Sorcerer's Skull left off, this fourth book in the Johnny Dixon series finds Johnny acting very strangely. He has terrible dreams, he wakes up having sleepwalked, and he is acting mean to his friends Fergie and Professor Childermass. The spirit of the evil Zebulon Windrow has taken over Johnny's body, and soon he is lying in a coma close to death. It is up to the professor and Fergie to save him, but that means going to the icy and dark Windrow estate, where the spirit of the evil wizard awaits them. Will the professor and Fergie get out with their lives? Will they be able to save Johnny's? The world seems to be falling down around them.

Johnny and Fergie are worried. Professor Childermass has been acting weird. Very weird. In this sixth Johnny Dixon mystery, the two boys sneak over to the professor's house to investigate, and what they find in the process is more amazing than usual: a talking statue, the ghosts of long-dead Crusaders, and a rickety old trolley that turns out to be a time machine. Soon, our three heroes have traveled back to Constantinople in 1453. The Turks are invading and Professor Childermass has taken it upon himself to save the people trapped in the Church of Holy Wisdom. Johnny and Fergie must stop their friend from getting himself killed on his noble but doomed mission, but in doing so, do they risk their own lives? Will they all be lost in the past forever?

Their friend Father Higgins is in trouble, and it is up to Johnny and Professor Childermass to save him from the forces of evil. In this, the eighth Johnny Dixon mystery, Johnny and the professor hear word of Father Higgins being haunted, and when he disappears, clues lead them to England. There they find the priest has been possessed by Dr. Masterman, the ghost of a deranged knight bent on ruling the world. Masterman intends to reanimate the bodies of seven evil fellow knights trapped in a hidden, underground room. Hundreds of years ago, the knights sold their souls to the devil and, if Masterman can bring them back, the entire world would be his to control. Can Johnny and the professor stop him in time? Is there any hope of getting their friend back from the spirit's clutches?

When Dr. Charles Coote-a noted folklorist and old friend of Professor Childermass-returns from a conference in New Orleans, he brings home a small, sinister drum. It's made entirely of black wood with red leather straps and small, white bones. Nobody takes Dr. Coote's worries about the drum very seriously, until Fergie taps it a few times and releases an unspeakable evil. Suddenly, Johnny and Fergie and the professor find themselves battling the imposing Madame Sinestra, a voodoo priestess who seeks the magical drum for her evil Caribbean cult. Spells, zombies, and voodoo demons beset our heroes and the fate of the world hangs in the balance. Can they save Dr. Coote? Will they make it out alive? This ninth book in the Johnny Dixon series was completed by Brad Strickland after John Bellairs died, and it has all the spooky thrills that make these mysteries classics.

One dark, drippy day, when Byron "Fergie" Ferguson gets bored, he wonders what the last book in the library is. What he finds past the last set of shelves is a battered black cover with the Dewey decimal number 99.99S and a title as red as blood-The Book of True Wishes by Jarmyn Thanatos. Even though Fergie is a good kid, he steals the book, setting off a chain of sinister events that threaten not only his life but the lives of his friends Johnny Dixon and Professor Childermass as well. Soon, Fergie is under the control of Thanatos, a mad sorcerer who has been putting children under his spell for the past three hundred years. Can Johnny and the professor break Fergie's deepening trance in time to stop Thanatos and his dangerous march toward maniacal immortality? This eleventh book in the Johnny Dixon series will hold readers spellbound until the final page.

On a trip to Florida with his father, Johnny Dixon visits a fortune-teller and receives an eerie premonition. Inside the crystal ball, Johnny sees a ghost-white face with long white hair and black eyes like puddles of oil, which screams, "The universe shall be mine!" Back home, Johnny's father falls unconscious, gravely ill in a way the doctors cannot understand. Johnny and his friend Professor Childermass investigate and soon realize that the spirit of Nyarlat-Hotep wants to use Major Dixon's body to destroy the world. To stop this fearsome demon, Johnny and the professor must join forces with Brewster, an otherworldly falcon, and fight Nyarlat-Hotep in its own, unearthly realm. Can they locate an ancient book and defeat their deepest fears in time, or is Johnny's father lost and our world doomed forever? Readers will shiver at the multiple worlds of suspense in this twelfth book in the Johnny Dixon series.

A flu epidemic ushers in a plague of dark magic in this spooktastic mystery featuring teenage sleuth Johnny Dixon from The Wrath of the Grinning Ghost. Though forty miles away, Duston Heights is not safe from the flu that's raging through Boston. When Johnny Dixon's grandmother falls ill, he's sent to live with his neighbor to avoid infection. So many locals are getting sick that school is canceled for a week, and the reclusive Dr. Abram Ashburn comes out of retirement to make house calls. After seeing a scary vision of his bedridden grandmother outside of a window, Johnny starts to feel on edge. Then he and his best friend find what looks to be a weird map of a cemetery in Dr. Ashburn's house. One specific grave is marked with an "X," the burial place of a woman who practiced witchcraft in the seventeenth century. The townspeople recover from the flu, but they can't escape the terrifying illusions and shadow people that now haunt them, unless Johnny and his friends find the key to unlock the secrets of the graveyard before a dreadful prophecy comes to pass . . . Praise for The Wrath of the Grinning Ghost "Fans of the series will enjoy this new supernatural adventure, which reads so much like Bellairs's books that they won't believe he didn't write it." -School Library Journal "Strickland's story is eerie, suspenseful, and true to the personalities and writing style of Bellairs, who began the Johnny Dixon series . . . This is good reading for adventure enthusiasts as well as for series fans." -Booklist