Publisher, Listening Library (August 2007)

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A Newbery Honor Book

"So perfect is the match between Alex Jennings' voice and this mysterious magical tale--that it is difficult to imagine any other voice reading these words." --The Horn Book Magazine

“Susan Cooper is one of the few contemporary writers who has the vivid imagination, the narrative powers, and the moral vision that permit her to create the kind of sweeping conflict between good and evil that lies at the heart of all great fantasy. Tolkien had it. So did C. S. Lewis. And Cooper writes in the same tradition.” –Psychology Today

On holiday in Cornwall, the three children discover an ancient map in the attic of the house that hey are staying in. They know immediately that it is special. It is even more than that--the key to finding a grail, a source of power to fight the forces of evil known as the Dark. And in searching for it themselves, the Drews put their lives in peril.

This is the first volume of Susan Cooper's brilliant and absorbing fantasy sequence know as The Dark is Rising.

About the Author: Susan Cooper, one of today's most distinguished children's book writers, won a Newbery Medal and a Newbery Honor for books in her fantasy sequence, The Dark is Rising. The first in the series, Over Sea, Under Stone, is perhaps more readily identified as a family adventure story, but it is much more than that. In Over Sea, Under Stone we have the first insights into the battle between the Dark and the Light and the introduction to the Arthurian and Celtic myths and legends which permeate the whole of the sequence. After completing Over Sea, Under Stone the listener has experienced only a taster of what is to come in the remaining stories. The Dark Is Rising series is a triumph. The series of books is moulded by Susan Cooper's own background and each book effectively weaves a path between the stuff of myth and legend and the lives of everyday people - people like us. One of the books in the series, The Grey King, won the Newbery Medal and The Dark Is Rising was a Newbery Honor book.

Susan lives in a house on an island in a salt marsh in Massachusetts, where she is close to her children and grandchildren in the town next door.

About the Performer: Alex Jennings is an English actor whose roles have included Charles, Prince of Wales in The Queen. He’s narrated The Dark Is Rising Sequence series.