The summer holidays are dragging on and Harry Potter can't wait for the start of the school year. It is his fourth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and there are spells to be learnt and (unluckily) Potions and Divination lessons to be attended. But Harry can't know that the atmosphere is darkening around him.

The fifth title in the worldwide bestselling series

Contains a short story that finds Lyra with her daemon Pantalaimon. Sitting on the roofs of Oxford, she sees a bird, the daemon of a witch, a storm petrel flying towards her pursued by a huge and angry flock of starlings. This text is illustrated in black and white wood-blocks, together with three-colour pull out maps.

'We're going to the land of the dead and we're going to come back' - Will and Lyra, whose fates are bound together by powers beyond their own worlds, have been violently separated. But they must find each other, for ahead of them lies the greatest war that has ever been - and a journey to a dark place from which no-one has ever returned...

'Without this child, we shall all die'. Lyra Belacqua and her animal daemon live half-wild and carefree among scholars of Jordan College, Oxford. The destiny that awaits her will take her to the frozen lands of the Arctic, where witch-clans reign and ice-bears fight. Her journey will have immeasurable consequences far beyond her own world.