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Informationen zum Autor Stephanie Burgis is the author of Masks and Shadows. She has published over thirty short stories for adults. Kat, Incorrigible (US)/A Most Improper Magick (UK) won the Waverton Good Read Children's Award in 2011 for Best Début Children's Novel by a British writer. It was followed by Renegade Magic/A Tangle of Magicks and Stolen Magic/A Reckless Magick. Born in Michigan, she now lives in Wales with her husband, writer Patrick Samphire, and their children. Before becoming a fulltime writer, she studied music history as a Fulbright Scholar in Vienna, Austria, and worked as a website editor for a British opera company. Klappentext The first installment of a Regency-era trilogy starring a feisty heroine with a taste for adventure. Twelve-year-old Katherine Ann Stephenson has just discovered that she's inherited her late mother's magical talents, and despite Stepmama's stern objections, she's determined to learn how to use them.1803 I was twelve years of age when I chopped off my hair, dressed as a boy, and set off to save my family from impending ruin. I made it almost to the end of my front garden. “Katherine Ann Stephenson!” My oldest sister Elissa’s outraged voice pinned me like a dagger as she threw open her bedroom window. “What on earth do you think you’re doing?” Curses . I froze, still holding my pack slung across my shoulder. I might be my family’s best chance of salvation, but there was no expecting either of my older sisters to understand that. If they’d trusted me in the first place, I wouldn’t have had to run away in the middle of the night, like a criminal. The garden gate was only two feet ahead of me. If I hurried . . . “I’m going to tell Papa!” Elissa hissed. Behind her, I heard groggy, incoherent moans of outrage—my other sister, Angeline, waking up. Elissa was the prissiest female ever to have been born. But Angeline was simply impossible. If they really did wake the whole household, and Papa came after me in the gig . . . I’d planned to walk to the closest coaching inn, six miles away, and catch the dawn stagecoach to London. If Papa caught up with me first, the sad, disappointed looks I’d have to endure from him for weeks afterward would be unbearable. And the way Stepmama would gloat over my disgrace— the second of our mother’s children to be a disappointment to the family . . . I gritted my teeth together as I turned and trudged back toward the vicarage. Angeline’s voice floated lazily through the open window. “What were you shouting about?” “I was not shouting!” Elissa snapped. “Ladies never shout.” “You could have fooled me,” said Angeline. “I thought the house must have been burning down.” I pushed the side door open just in time to hear my brother, Charles, bellow, “Would everyone be quiet? Some of us are trying to sleep!” “What? What?” My father’s reedy voice sounded from his bedroom at the head of the stairs. “What’s going on out there?” My stepmother’s voice overrode his. “For heaven’s sake, make them be quiet, George! It’s past midnight. You cannot let them constantly behave like hoydens. Be firm, for once!” I groaned and closed the door behind me. Like it or not, I was home. I squeezed through the narrow kitchen and tiptoed up the rickety staircase that led to the second floor. When I was a little girl and Mama’s influence still lingered in the house, each of the stairs had whispered my name as I stepped onto them, and they never let me trip. Now, the only sound they made was the telltale creak of straining wood. The door to Papa and Stepmama’s room swung open as I reached the head of the first flight of stairs, and I stopped, resigned. “Kat?” Papa blinked out at me, peering through the darkness. He held a candle in his hand. “What’s amiss?” “Nothing, Papa,” I sai...
