Home > Fiction & Literature > Classics > Charmed Life

Charmed Life

List Price: $5.95

Save 5.0%

You Pay: $5.65

Want this eBook?Our eBook Library Software is required to purchase and download eBooks. Download it here.

Tell a Friend

Overview

Cat doesn't mind living in the shadow of his sister, Gwendolen, the most promising young witch ever seen on Coven Street. But trouble starts brewing the moment the two orphans are summoned to live in Chrestomanci Castle. Frustrated that the witches of the castle refuse to acknowledge her talents, Gwendolen conjures up a scheme that could throw whole worlds out of whack.

Editorial Reviews

Editorial Reviews for this product are not available at this time.

Author Information

Bio of Diana Wynne Jones

Diana Wynne Jones was born in London in 1934. She grew up amidst the destruction of World War II, and as a result her family moved around a lot as she was growing up, before finally settlign in Essex. Not being able to get many books, Jones and her sister made up their own stories, and though Jones was dyslexic, she wrote down her stories anyway. Between the ages of 12 and 14 she filled more than twenty notebooks with two stories. In 1953, Jones began school at St. Anne's College Oxford and attended lectures by J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. After graduation, Jones continued to write, creating plays for children that were performed at the London Arts Theatre. Her first book was published in 1973, and in 1977, her book Charmed Life won the Guardian Award for Children's Books. She was twice runner up for the Carnegie Medal and in 1999 won the Mythopeic Award and the Karl Edward Wagner Award. 030

Customer Reviews

There are no customer reviews available at this time. To add your review, Register or Sign In to your account using our free eBook Library Software.

Additional Info

Imprint

HarperCollins

Filesize

506.18 KB

Number of Pages

608

eBook ISBN

0061187348

Excerpt from: Charmed Life by Diana Wynne Jones

Chapter One
CAT CHANT ADMIRED his elder sister Gwendolen. She was a witch. He admired her and he clung to her. Great changes came about in their lives and left him no one else to cling to.

The first great change came about when their parents took them out for a day trip down the river in a paddle steamer. They set out in great style, Gwendolen and her mother in white dresses with ribbons, Cat and his father in prickly blue-serge Sunday suits. It was a hot day. The steamer was crammed with other people in holiday clothes, talking, laughing, eating whelks with thin slices of white bread and butter, while the paddleboat steam organ wheezed out popular tunes so that no one could hear themselves talk.

In fact the steamer was too crowded and too old. Something went wrong with the steering. The whole laughing, whelk-eating, Sunday-dressed crowd was swept away in the current from the dam. They hit one of the posts which were supposed to stop people being swept away, and the paddle steamer, being old, simply broke into pieces. Cat remembered the organ playing and the paddles beating the blue sky. Clouds of steam screamed from broken pipes and drowned the screams from the crowd, as every single person aboard was swept away through the dam. It was a terrible accident. The papers called it the Saucy Nancy Disaster. The ladies in their clinging skirts were quite unable to swim. The men in tight blue serge were very little better off. But Gwendolen was a witch, so she could not drown. And Cat, who flung his arms around Gwendolen when the boat hit the post, survived too. There were very few other survivors.