It will keep you turning the pages, and probably leaving your lights on, late into the night.

If you like quick, creepy reads with mystery and menace, The Prince of Mist is for you. Together, the three of them begin to unravel the mystery surrounding the town, which is entwined with an evil force from the past - an entity known as the Prince of Mist. Max and his sister Alicia soon meet a new friend named Roland, whose parents died in a tragic accident when he was small. There is a shipwreck just off the coast, and a strange old man who runs the town lighthouse. There is a strange walled garden behind the house, filled with creepy statues of circus performers. Young Max discovers that their new family house was owned by a doctor and his wife, whose son drowned many years before. They move to a small beach town which has more than its share of secrets. The Carver family decides to leave their urban home in Spain to escape the war. The war in Europe plays only a background role in the book, much as it does in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. The Prince of Mist was his first book, and it did not disappoint. I'd read Zafon's The Name of the Wind, a brilliant adult novel blending Gothic horror and magic realism, but I wasn't aware that Zafon actually began his career writing middle grade fantasies.

A big change of pace from my nonfiction reading about World War II, The Prince of Mist is a middle grade novel by acclaimed Spanish writer Carlos Ruiz Zafon.

The Prince of Mist by Carlos Ruiz Zafón