Young Wizards Series

As young wizards, Nita and her friend, Kit, share magic spells and spectacular adventures. Twice, they have successfully thwarted a dark power called the Lone One. Each victory has protected the universe against its paralyzing force-for a while. But now Darine, Nita's 10-year-old sister, has found her wizard's manual. With the help of a laptop computer, Darine has not only absorbed the book's wisdom, she has become a powerful wizard herself. Setting off on a jaunt to distant galaxies, Darine doesn't realize she is headed toward a confrontation with the Lone One. Can Nita and Kit find her in time to help? Children love Diane Duane's works for their fast-paced combination of sorcery and suspense. She adds wonderful technological twists to this third book in her Wizardry series, and narrator Christina Moore's voice adds just the right touch of magic.

Because she insists on fighting with words instead of her fists, 13-year-old Nita is regularly tormented by a gang of classmates. One day, running to escape their blows, she hides in the only safe place nearby-the library. When a book about wizardry catches her eye, Nita finds the help she needs in its pages. As she moves from chapter to chapter, Nita learns more sophisticated spells. Soon, stepping through a worldgate, she enters a shadowy city swirling with vicious taxicabs and carnivorous fire plugs. What begins as a simple quest quickly becomes a struggle to keep a powerful and ominous force from passing back into Nita's world. Ranked with the best of Madeleine L'Engle and Diana Wynne Jones, Diane Duane's magical tale of wizardry and wisdom has become a modern fantasy classic. Christina Moore's delightful narration captures all the excitement and danger in this thrilling fantasy adventure.

Even though she's on vacation at the beach, young wizard Nita is still on active duty, available to assist any other wizard in distress. So when Nita meets the wizard S'reee, she is bound to promise help. Nita is needed to face the Lone Power, who is threatening life in the oceans. But although S'reee is a wizard, she is also a whale. Nita will need to shapeshift into a sea creature to join her. And when Nita learns that the final confrontation will take place 16,000 feet below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean, she begins to get uneasy. Explaining day-long absences to her curious parents will be tricky, too. Diane Duane's Wizardry books are marvelous combinations of fantasy, fast-paced adventure, and realism. As Nita crafts spells and prepares for what could be the ultimate sacrifice, you'll be pulled into her wondrous world. Christina Moore's vivid narration brings out the suspense and magic of each moment.

Fourteen-year-old Nita is in Ireland, spending the summer with her aunt. As a young wizard, Nita is fascinated by the forces at work in this ancient land. Sometimes, the world seems to be shifting sideways into another dimension. Layers of history, rich with battles between superhuman tribes, lurk beneath the surface of every moment. When Nita discovers that her aunt is a wizard, too, Nita realizes that this summer will not be a vacation. Ireland truly is in danger: her past is breaking into the present. And if this disintegration of time continues, the rest of the physical world will crumble, too. Nita must help her aunt and the other wizards restore order again. Like the other books in Diane Duane's popular series, A Wizard Abroad is filled with all the imaginative details of a magical world. Its frisky spells, talkative cats, and moonlight visions are enhanced by Christina Moore's spirited narration. Also available: So You Want to Be a Wizard, Deep Wizardry, and High Wizardry.

Nita's best friend and wizard partner Kit has gone his own way, leaving Nita to practice magic on her own. In the midst of this sad goodbye, Nita's mother is diagnosed with terminal brain cancer--seemingly untreatable by science or sorcery. Nita's greatest foe, the evil Lone Power, may be her only hope. Her mother's life hanging in the balance, Nita must now trust an arch-nemesis she's spent a lifetime fighting. The Wizard's Dilemma is the fifth title in Diane Duane's New York Times best-selling Wizardry series, which includes So You Want to be a Wizard, Deep Wizardry, High Wizardry, and A Wizard Abroad. Christina Moore vividly conveys Nita's teenage angst, fear and courage in these wonderful tales of magic and mischief that have delighted readers for almost 20 years. Before there was Harry, there was Nita!

Diane Duane has written more than two dozen science fiction and fantasy novels, including four New York Times best-sellers. Her popular Young Wizards series, including High Wizardry, is available unabridged from Recorded Books. When teenage wizard Nita gets signed up for an intergalactic cultural exchange program, she travels to a world that is a little too perfect.

Nita and Kit return from their wizardly holiday, looking forward to getting back to their everyday routine. But there's trouble brewing. A strange darkness of the mind and heart is about to befall the older wizards of the world, stealing away their power. Soon, the young wizards of Earth and many other planets find themselves forced to defend wizards and nonwizards alike against an invasion of a kind they've never imagined. But mere defense won't be enough to combat the evil afoot. With their alien teammates, Nita, Kit, and Dairine must race to search worlds known and unknown for the secret weapon the Powers That Be have promised them--before the minions of the sinister Lone Power find it first. And then, for the first time in millenia, the wizards must go to war. . . .

In this ninth novel in her acclaimed Young Wizards series, New York Times best-selling author Diane Duane whisks listeners away to Mars for a compelling adventure. While young wizards Kit and Nita investigate the mystery of the Red Planet's long-lost inhabitants, life suddenly emerges again to shake Mars with its own perilous and baffling brand of magic. Kit's long-standing Martian fascination ensnares him in a terrible, age-old conflict-making him a key to its solution or a tool for destroying humans. As Nita searches for Kit, she soon finds herself battling an implacable foe.

Every eleven years, Earth's senior wizards hold the Invitational: an intensive three-week event where the planet's newest, sharpest young wizards show off their best and hottest spells. Wizardly partners Kit Rodriguez and Nita Callahan, and Nita's sister, former wizard-prodigy Dairine Callahan, are drafted in to mentor two brilliant and difficult cases: for Nita and Kit, there's Penn Shao-Feng, a would-be sun technician with a dangerous new take on managing solar weather; and for Dairine, there's shy young Mehrnaz Farrahi, an Iranian wizard-girl trying to specialize in defusing earthquakes while struggling with a toxic extended wizardly family that demands she perform to their expectations. Together they're plunged into a whirlwind of cutthroat competition and ruthless judging. Penn's egotistical attitude toward his mentors complicates matters as the pair tries to negotiate their burgeoning romance. Meanwhile, Dairine struggles to stabilize her hero-worshipping, insecure protegee against the interference of powerful relatives using her to further their own tangled agendas. When both candidates make it through to the finals stage on the dark side of the Moon, they and their mentors are flung into a final conflict that could change the solar system for the better or damage Earth beyond even wizardly repair.