The other day, a fragment of a memory dislodged itself from the detritus at the bottom of my subconscious and floated to the top, and now it’s puzzling me to no end:
When I was about 11 or 12, I read a series of chapter books concerning a boy living with his aunt and uncle (or maybe great-aunt and great-uncle - some relatives who were not his parents, anyways.) His aunt and uncle were involved in witchcraft, and they had some adventures related to this.
Not terribly descriptive, I know, but here’s what I remember the most about them: there were illustrations scattered throughout the books that were either done by Edward Gorey or someone trying to copy his style (i.e. moody, dark, black-and-white pen-and-ink drawings.)
Anyone else remember these, or am I just deluding myself?
Maybe The House With A Clock In Its Walls by John Bellairs? It’s illustrated by Gorey and the plot is pretty much what you described – an orphaned boy goes to live with his uncle, who is a rather mysterious magician/wizard type guy.
It’s the first in a rather loosely connected series, some of the other titles focus on other children and their adventures, and the orphan boy is more of a secondary character, but they all tie in together somehow.
Delphica’s right–it sounds as if you’re talking about John Bellairs’ Lewis Barnevelt series. He had a couple other series (Johnny Dixon, Anthony Monday) that weren’t connected to each other or to Lewis’ series, and almost all the books seem to have been illustrated by Edward Gorey. I refer to them as “juvenile gothics”, and I generally find them more entertaining, and disturbing, than a lot of the books sold for adults. Bellairs was an excellent writer. I don’t have quite all of his books, but I’m getting close!
