“The Wandering Hour” by Zack Loran Clark and Nick Eliopulos is a delightfully scary book for young people. Menacing magical artifacts and frightening monsters await within its pages. So come, step into the City of New Rotterdam, where the urban legends you read about online are real … if you dare!

Our story begins with the unfortunate Brian Skupp. Brian is unfortunate because, as he’s leaving school, he notices an ornate golden hourglass that holds red sand.  When the sand starts falling to the bottom bulb of the hourglass, something extraordinary happens. Time stops, and all the people leaving school are frozen.

One person is not frozen, though. A grandmotherly lady he’s never seen before begins to dance and sway toward Brian. Getting a very bad feeling, he starts to run, but to no avail. Brian is never heard from again. 

Enter our heroes, Emrys, Hazel, and Serena.  Emrys and Hazel are both cryptid enthusiasts and contributors to the New Rotterdam Wiki Project, a website dedicated to all things strange in the city. Their friend Serena is a big horror movie fan, but doesn’t believe that the supernatural is real.

The three friends, who also live in the same apartment building, are watching movies at Serena’s house, when the lights go out. They hear the door to the apartment building open and someone whistling as footsteps proceed up the stairs to the top floor apartment of their reclusive neighbor Mr. Van Stavern.

When Emrys, Hazel, and Serena go to check on him, they find the apartment has been ransacked and Mr. Van Stavern is missing. They do find a strange-looking book with an eye in the center of its cover. Then the eye opens!

When the eye sees Emrys, Hazel and Serena, the three young women are pulled into an interdimensional pocket. Mr. Van Stavern, who is now trapped in the book, tells them this is where a group called the Order of the Azure Eye safeguards magical items, especially from the Yellow Court.

The Yellow Court is known for leaving dangerous magical items where they can cause the most damage, for unknown purposes. Meanwhile, the hourglass known as the Wandering Hour is still hunting. Will the three friends be able to stop the Wandering Hour and is there a connection between it and the Yellow Court?

Check this book out at the Lincoln County Library or Star Valley Branch Library to find out!