John Bellairs was an American author best known for his fantasy novel “The Face in the Frost” and many gothic mystery novels for young adults featuring the characters Lewis Barnavelt, Rose Rita Pottinger, Anthony Monday and Johnny Dixon. One of his biggest works, “The House with a Clock in Its Walls,” is a juvenile mystery novel illustrated by Edward Gorey and the first in the series of novels featuring the fictional American boy Lewis Barnavelt. It follows the adventures of a young boy who goes to live with his uncle in a creaky old house. The movie adaptation starring Jack Black and Cate Blanchett and directed by Eli Roth is now in theaters everywhere.

According to Amazon, when Lewis Barnavelt, an orphan, goes to stay with his uncle Jonathan, he expects to meet an ordinary person. It turns out that his Uncle Jonathan and his next-door neighbor Mrs. Zimmerman, are both magicians. His uncle’s house was previously owned by Isaac and Selenna Izard, a sinister couple who practiced black magic and plotted to bring about the end of the world. Before he died, Isaac hid a clock inside the walls of the house; it was meant to eternally tick and as it pulled the world into the magical alignment and allow him to destroy it. When Lewis befriends a popular and athletic boy named Tarby Corrigan, he tries to impress him by raising the dead in the local cemetery on Halloween and ends up releasing Selenna from her tomb. Her ghost wreaks havoc in town and leads to a final confrontation in Jonathan’s basement where Lewis must stop her from finishing her husband’s work to destroy the world.