Well Witched

Ryan and his friends don't think twice about stealing some money from a wishing well. After all, who's really going to miss a few tarnished coins?

The well witch does.

And she demands payback: Now Ryan, Josh, and Chelle must serve her . . . and the wishes that lie rotting at the bottom of her well. Each takes on powers they didn't ask for and don't want. Ryan grows strange bumps—are they eyes?—between his knuckles; Chelle starts speaking the secrets of strangers, no matter how awful and bloody; and Josh can suddenly—inexplicably—grant even the darkest of wishes, the kind of wishes that should never come true.

Darkly witty, wholly unexpected, and exquisitely sinister, Frances Hardinge's Well Witched is one well-cast tale that readers didn't know they were wishing for.

Publishers Weekly

British author Hardinge's (Fly by Night) supernatural thriller takes off slowly but then becomes inescapably chilling. Stranded in a forbidden location, three friends steal coins from a wishing well to come up with bus fare. To their shock, they find themselves endowed with disturbing powers that emerge in nightmarish forms: Chelle can't stop voicing the thoughts of others, Josh affects electrical currents, and Ryan's knuckles sprout warts with eyes. Before long they realize that they must grant the wishes made by the persons who tossed in the coins-and, it emerges, to grant not their stated wishes, but their unconscious wishes, which prove increasingly menacing. Adhering to the point of view of Ryan, the most stable of the trio, Hardinge lets readers share the impact of his gradual discovery of Josh's sinister side. The author leavens the creepy tone only slightly with Chelle's positive transformation and Ryan's growing tolerance of ambiguity; she shows great faith in her cast's and in her readers' intelligence. Taut as the plotting is, insightful as the characterizations are, the language, especially the imagery, stands out even more: "[Chelle's mother] was always very busy in the way that a moth crashing about in a lampshade is busy." A dark, polished gem. Ages 8-12. (June)

Frances Hardinge is the acclaimed author of Fly By night and Well Witched. She spent her childhood in Kent, England, in a huge, isolated old house in a small, strange village, and from an early age she wrote stories filled with magic and vivid characters. She studied at Oxford University, where she was a founding member of a writers' workshop.