Schooled in Magic

Emily is a teenage girl pulled from our world into a world of magic and mystery by a necromancer who intends to sacrifice her to the dark gods. Rescued in the nick of time by an enigmatic sorcerer, she discovers that she possesses magical powers and must go to Whitehall School to learn how to master them. There, she learns that the locals believe she is a "Child of Destiny" - someone whose choices might save or damn their world, a title that earns her both friends and enemies. A stranger in a very strange land, she may never fit in to her new world, and the necromancer is still hunting her. If Emily can't stop him, he might bring about the end of days.

After completing her first year of learning magic at Whitehall School, Emily accepts an invitation from Princess Alassa to accompany her on her progress back to her home country of Zangaria, where the princess may meet her future husband. Alassa, who was a spoiled brat before she met Emily, wants to show off her friend - and impress potential suitors. For Emily, it is a chance to relax and explore a world very different to Earth, meet new people and come to terms with her reputation in the Nameless World. After her defeat of Shadye, everyone wants to know her, to talk with her, to kill her or to marry her. For Emily, hardly a social butterfly, the experience is disconcerting. She was never seriously courted before, not on Earth. And yet, as she sees more of the countries surrounding Whitehall, she feels more and more out of place. The locals come from a very different culture, one that is often strange and horrifying to her eyes. Even her friends seem different people in their homes. But dark forces are at work, plotting to capture the princess, take power in Zangaria, and undo all of Emily's work. As all hell breaks loose, Emily may be all that stands between Zangaria and a return to the dark ages of brute force that threatened to lay the kingdom low once before. And if she fails, her friends will be just the first victims of a war that will rip the Allied Lands apart.

Brimming with new ideas for magical research, Emily returns to Whitehall School for her second year of magical education, looking forward to returning to her studies. And yet things are different; her new roommates harbor their secrets, her old friends are becoming distracted by sports and games, and one of the teachers seems to dislike her. As she starts new classes, she discovers she has to work far harder to keep her place in the school. But her second year will be far more adventurous than her first. When it becomes clear that there is a murderer - and a spy - in the school, Emily will be the only one who can save the school from a plot aimed right at the heart of the Allied Lands themselves. And yet her curiosity may very well prove her undoing.

In the summer between second and third year at Whitehall, Emily accompanies Lady Barb on her rounds of the Cairngorm Mountains, bringing magical help to the locals and searching for new magicians. For Emily, tired and broken after the events of Study in Slaughter, it should be a chance to relax as well as to visit a new part of the Nameless World, to put her responsibilities aside and just be herself. But the locals aren't quite what she expects, with problems of their own, and Lady Barb is a different person away from Whitehall. As children start to go missing and evil things are abroad in the night, Emily discovers that a deadly plot is slowly bringing the mountain community to the brink of disaster and that her oldest enemies are about to make a very unwelcome return.

A plot is being hatched at Mountaintop Academy, a plot that threatens the lives of Emily and her friends...and the integrity of the Allied Lands. In a desperate bid to uncover the secrets of Mountaintop and recover her stolen notes, Emily goes undercover into Mountaintop, a mission that may cost her everything.