Looks behind fortress walls to explore how they were built to house hundreds of people and animals, how a boy rose from page to knight, and what castle life was like.

It's a new year at Bloor's Academy for gifted children. But, for Charlie Bone, school is a dangerous place. He has powerful enemies who resent his magical gift. The Bloors want him dead, and they've created the perfect weapon to do it.

Text and cutaway illustrations depict how people lived and worked inside a medieval castle.

Nancy and her friends have been asked by Nancy's father to help him with a case when he suddenly disappears.

The queen and her raggedy witches have fled, but the kingdom is not yet healed. The castle is haunted by memories of its brutal past. The ghosts are angry, and one of them in particular possesses a magic which may be too much for even Mup and Mam to handle.

When voices in photographs start whispering to Charlie Bone, his ordinary life becomes very unusual indeed. With his new magical talent, Charlie is offto Bloor's Academy for gifted children. But the school is a dangerous place, full of dark secrets from the past - and he discovers that even his own family can't be trusted.

Ancient places such as castles are filled with histories, sometimes bloody and gruesome, but always fascinating. And the 11 dark places explored in this title are sure to chill young readers' imaginations. For example, at Chillingham Castle in England, they'll meet John Sage, who tortured up to 50 prisoners a week. He had a tilted floor in his torture chamber, so the victims' blood could easily drain away. John boiled some prisoners in pots and locked...

When an ancient enchanter is released from the grounds of Bloor's Academy, threatening both of Charlie Bone's parents, the only way Charlie and his friends can defeat him is by finding the red king himself.

Twelve-year-old William uses the magic token to return, through the toy castle in his attic, to the medieval land of Sir Simon, which is now menaced by a skeleton ship bearing a plague of ravenous rats.

"The seventh episode of the Children of the Red King series moves the main plot forward an inch amidst yet more scheming and attempted murder by the increasingly powerful supporters of evil Count Harken. Charlie passes repeatedly into a painting that transports him (once with a snake that renders him invisible) into the dismal land of Badlock; by the end he has done a good deed for a grieving giant but left friend and pivotal character Billy Raven...