In this tour de force, master storyteller Gregory Maguire offers a dazzling novel for fantasy lovers of all ages.

Elena Rudina lives in the impoverished Russian countryside. Her father has been dead for years. One of her brothers has been conscripted into the Tsar’s army, the other taken as a servant in the house of the local landowner. Her mother is dying, slowly, in their tiny cabin. And there is no food. But then a train arrives in the village, a train carrying untold wealth, a cornucopia of food, and a noble family destined to visit the Tsar in Saint Petersburg — a family that includes Ekaterina, a girl of Elena’s age. When the two girls’ lives collide, an adventure is set in motion, an escapade that includes mistaken identity, a monk locked in a tower, a prince traveling incognito, and — in a starring role only Gregory Maguire could have conjured — Baba Yaga, witch of Russian folklore, in her ambulatory house perched on chicken legs.

The winds of change are about to fill the sails of Jack Drayton…
A penniless young man living on a barge on the Thames in 1903 London, Jack Drayton is unsure of where his life is heading. He’s trying to decide what to do with himself next when he meets a peculiar stranger. Needing a ride to shore one evening, Jack hitches a ride from this stranger, who speaks, dresses, and behaves as though he’s stepped out of another era. After Jack helps the man escape a fracas in town, he tells Jack that he is in fact Black Juan Gaskara, an infamous pirate, and claims that he’s on the run for his life.

Now, that would be all fine and good, except for the fact that the real Black Juan Gaskara would have to be over 112 years old; or more logically, dead.

Despite his disbelief however, Jack is intrigued by the man. Especially when he learns of the treasure that Gaskara has apparently hidden on Peril Island, a place only known to Black Juan.
Before Juan is murdered by descendants of the crew he double-crossed over the loot, he leaves Jack with a cryptogram and map that will reveal where the treasure is hidden. Now it’s up to Jack to recover the treasure before Black Juan’s enemies – who wish to use it to set up a global crime empire – get their hands on it first. With his best friend Hector at his side, Jack must venture on the dangerous ocean journey of a lifetime, following the cryptic clues to uncover the treasure before Gaskara’s foes put an end to his search…and his life!