Lisa Goldstein has published eight novels, including the recent Walking the Labyrinth. Her novel The Red Magician won the American Book Award for Best Paperback. She has also published a short story collection, Travellers in Magic, and numerous short stories. Her novels and short stories have been finalists for the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy awards. "She has given us the kind of magic and adventure that once upon a time made us look for secret panels in the walls of wardrobes, or brush our teeth with a book held in front of our eyes, because we couldn't bear to...

Scientist, mathematician, and court astrologer to Queen Elizabeth I, John Dee is also one of the sixteenth-century's most renowned alchemists, driven by a passion to fathom the elemental secrets of the cosmos. But when his reckless assistant, Edward Kelley, succeeds in using a crystal sphere to summon angels, Dee is catapulted into an awesome struggle that may extinguish the light of reason forever.

One of the spirits invoked is a cunning demon who takes possession of Dee's young daughter, Katherine, and shows Dee a frightening vision of his own future. Terrified by what has been...