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

'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.

The first of the five books which form The Dark Is Rising sequence, this book features three children, on holiday in Cornwall, who discover an ancient map which leads them into a search for a buried grail.

The long-buried secrets of the Old Kingdom and the Ninth Gate are revealed in the sequel to Sabriel and Lirael .