Heike Schwarzbauer

From the author of The Neverending Story, a book that reminds us that "magic--be it good or bad--is no simple matter." It's New Year's Eve at the Villa Nightmare but Beelzebub Preposteror is in no mood for celebration. As the Shadow Sorcery Minister, Preposteror has a duty to perform a certain number of evil deeds in service to the Minister of Pitch Darkness. But this year, to his horror, he's nowhere near meeting that quota. Preposteror has all but given up when who should make an unexpected visit but his aunt, the witch Tyrannia Vampirella. She has come with a diabolical proposal that just might be the solution to Preposterer's dilemma: together they will brew the fabled Notion Potion, "one of the most ancient and powerful evil spells in the universe," and their every evil wish will be granted. The only thing that stands in their way is a most unlikely team--a cat named Mauricio di Mauro and a raven known as Jacob Scribble, who have just hours to thwart the plans of their sorcerer masters and save the world from destruction.

An East German writer, awaiting a call from the hospital where her brother is undergoing brain surgery, instead receives news of a massive nuclear accident at Chernobyl, one thousand miles away. In the space of a single day, in a potent, lyrical stream of thought, the narrator confronts both mortality and life and above all, the import of each moment lived-open, as Wolf reveals, to infinite analysis.