Mabel Gray and the Wizard Who Swallowed the Sun

All is not well in Brightsbane, the village of eternal night. An evil wizard—the very wizard who swallowed the sun, in fact—has stolen The Boneyard Compendium, a book of powerful spells that could bring about the destruction of the entire town. When an Elder enlists the orphans of St. Crippleback’s Home for Waifs and Strays to help track down the wizard, the ever-intrepid Mabel Gray sets out to find the three keys of bone that unlock the Compendium before the wizard gets his diabolical hands on them. Armed with only her wit and a frightfully small bit of magic in her pocket, Mabel embarks on an adventure that brings her face-to-face with talking scarecrows, high-ranking monsters, babbling witches, ill-tempered daemons, a riddlesome owl who fancies himself a raven, and more. But the wizard isn’t a wizard for nothing, and his evil magic may prove to be more powerful than Mabel ever imagined...

Clayton Smith is a writer of speculative fiction living in Chicago, where he has become exceedingly good at cursing the winters. He writes novels, short stories, and plays, mostly. His work has been featured on the popular Internet site Amazon, and he has had plays produced rather mercilessly in St. Louis and New York City. Clayton tends to inject a healthy dose of magical mayhem into his stories, which distresses his characters to no end. One day, they will likely rebel against him, but for now, they're all fairly busy managing various disasters, wizards, and the occasional apocalypse.