Art and design by David Curtis

Over the Woodward Wall by A. Deborah Baker wasn’t supposed to be real.

The book, a young-at-heart tale of talking trees and sarcastic owls, of dangerous mermaids and captivating queens, only existed within the story of the shadowy world of Seanan McGuire’s Middlegame. A charming, and increasingly important, respite from the intrigues in McGuire’s 2019 novel.

But sometimes a book decides what it wants to be without you.

In fall of 2020, writing as A. Deborah Baker, New York Times bestselling and award-winning author Seanan McGuire will introduce readers to the full version of this companion book to McGuire’s critically-acclaimed Middlegame.

If you trust her you’ll never get home…

Avery is an exceptional child. Everything he does is precise, from the way he washes his face in the morning, to the way he completes his homework – without complaint, without fuss, without prompt.

Zib is also an exceptional child, because all children are, in their own way. But where everything Avery does and is can be measured, nothing Zib does can possibly be predicted, except for the fact that she can always be relied upon to be unpredictable.

They live on the same street.

They live in different worlds.

On an unplanned detour from home to school one morning, Avery and Zib find themselves climbing over a low stone wall into the Up and Under – an impossible land filled with mystery, adventure and the strangest creatures. And they must find themselves and each other if they are to also find their way out and back to their own lives.

Over the Woodward Wall arrives in October 2020.

SEANAN McGUIRE is the author of the Hugo, Nebula, Alex and Locus Award-winning Wayward Children series, the October Daye series, the InCryptid series, and other works. She also writes darker fiction as Mira Grant. Seanan lives in Seattle with her cats, a vast collection of creepy dolls, horror movies, and sufficient books to qualify her as a fire hazard. She won the 2010 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and in 2013 became the first person to appear five times on the same Hugo ballot.