The Crypt Beneath Gauntlet Bridge

Some warnings are meant to be ignored. Some are meant to save your life. Halloween, 1963 — a small town, two brothers, and the kind of spooky, funny adventure adults remember being lost in, and kids still are. Brothers Jonesy and Mikey expect the usual fall troubles: hand-me-down costumes, schoolyard bullies, and trying not to land themselves in more trouble than their parents can handle. Then a hooded boy with glowing red eyes appears at school. A strange elf hands out enchanted snow globes. And someone leaves a chilling message on their doorstep: Stay away from the As Is Mercantile. Of course, they don't. Behind the dusty shelves lies a secret tunnel to Elsewhere Station, where hundreds of doors open onto wonder and danger. But the boys already have a world of their own. Out in an abandoned field, hidden beneath Gauntlet Bridge — an old rusted sheet of metal that covers the way down — sits the Crypt: an underground fort they built with their own hands, their headquarters for a thousand imagined adventures and their escape from everything. This winter, the real magic finds it. And when the darkness turns the boys' safest place into a trap, Jonesy will have to go back down for his brother. The first Spiegelville adventure — a heart-thumping Halloween-to-Christmas story of spooky doors, snowy 1960s charm, and the bond between brothers, for upper middle-grade readers, teens, and every adult who ever had a secret fort. A mysterious warning. A secret crypt of their own making. A winter of magic, danger, and discovery they will never forget.