The Garden of Darkness

I am indebted to Jane Yolen, who helped me not only in my role as new author, but also in my life as an English professor at Smith College. Thanks, Jane, for your kindness and support. Jessica Brody is a good friend as well as a wonderful writer. Caroline Kendall Orszak, a marvelous reader, made me cut three chapters (yes, it had to be done), and is also my sister. Robert N. Watson is a dear friend and a supportive colleague who has guided me for years and years and years. My participation in the Stanford Creative Writing Workshop, set me on this path, and among many marvelous and influential writers in that program two faculty members deserve my special thanks: Nancy Packer and Robert Stone. Nancy Packer taught me from the sentence up (and I was married from her house), while Robert Stone, who can’t possibly remember me, once said, after reading one of my short stories, “If you can write an ending like this, you can be a writer.”


Thanks to Mimi, sometimes known as Irene Dorit—a wondrous mother-in-law—and to Murray Dorit, whose memory remains. A particular thanks to my parents, Carol Kendall and Paul Murray Kendall—both no longer with us—who were both writers. My mother wrote children’s books—one a Newbery honor book; my father was a distinguished historian who wrote, among many other things, the definitive biographies of Richard III and Louis XI. They encouraged my imagination and my voice from the outset, and for that—among many other things—I thank them. I’ve already thanked my sister, but that was for her skills as a reader; here I thank her for being my big sister. Finally, thank you to my two boys, Sasha and Gabriel, and to my husband, Rob Dorit, who did everything.



Gillian Murray Kendall

Gillian Murray Kendall is a Full Professor at Smith College, where she specializes in Shakespeare and non-Shakespearean Renaissance Drama. She has two children, Sasha and Gabriel, and lives in Northampton, Massachusetts with her husband, biologist Robert Dorit. Gillian likes all gardens, dark and light.

When Pen inherits the job of caretaker for a London building with no doors and only a secret entrance from the caretaker’s lodge – which she must never use – little does she know it will lead her into unbelievable danger. For Azmordis, also known as Satan, a spirit as old as Time and as powerful as the Dark, immortality is running out.

In the house with no front door, a group of teenagers are trapped in assorted dimensions of myth and history, undergoing the trials that will shape them to step into his cloven footwear – or destroy them. Assisted by an aspiring chef called Gavin and Jinx, a young witch with more face-piercing than fae-power, Pen must try to stop the Devil’s deadly game – before it’s too late.

‘Jan Siegel is probably the best British fantasy writer working today, and The Devil’s Apprentice is, true to form, a box of delights. It is entirely unmissable.’

Lavie Tidhar, World Fantasy Award-winning author


‘She writes in a quiet but uncommonly witty style that can soar into elegance or mute dread.’

Publishers Weekly on The Witch Queen

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