The Dreadful Tale of Prosper Redding

Prosperity Redding (please, just call him Prosper!) is the unexceptional child in an exceptional family.  His twin sister Prue was sick with a heart defect for years, but a miraculous surgery cured her, and now she's off being wonderful, too, and realizing just what a loser her brother is.  Their parents may be loving and kind, but their grandmother is something else.

When Prosper and Prue return home one day to find a family reunion of sorts, they are instantly on alert.  Their cold and imposing grandmother leads them into the basement (dungeon?) and tries to kill Prosper!  Well, after some weird stuff happens with a book bursting into flames.

Prosper is carried away by a stranger.  When he wakes up in a strange house in Salem, Massachusetts, he discovers the stranger is his Uncle Barnabus, he has a new cousin he's never met (who hates the entire Redding family), and he's possessed by a demon.

Yeah, a demon!  It seems that Prosper's colonial ancestor made a deal with a demon a few hundred years ago, and now Prosper is paying the price.  The only way to kill the demon (Alastor or just Al as Prosper calls him) is to trap it in a living host and kill the host.  Hence the creepy dungeon scene.  Barnabus and Nell claim they want to help Prosper find another way of banishing the Malefactor, but Prosper's thirteenth birthday is only days away, and after that, it will be too late.

Will Prosper and his friends find a way to free him from the demon before it is too late, or will he succumb to the persuasive voice of Alastor to make a contract and save himself?  Read this humorous and spooky tale from Alexandra Bracken to find out!  Recommended!