Conrad's Fate
"Unless you put right what you did wrong in your previous life – and put it right now – you are going to be horribly and painfully dead before the year's out."
Someone at the mysterious Stallery Mansion is pulling the possibilities. At first only small details change – the color of the mailboxes, the titles of books – but the changes keep getting bigger and bigger. It's up to Conrad Tesdinic, a twelve-year-old with truly terrible karma, to find the person behind it all.
Armed with his camera and a sticky cork that can summon an eerie being called a Walker, Conrad infiltrates the staff at Stallery. And he's not the only one snooping around the mansion. His fellow servant-in-training – charming, confident Christopher Chant – is searching for his friend Millie, who's lost in one of the possibilities. Christopher always seems to have a trick up his sleeve. To find the person behind all the mischief and to rescue Millie, the two boys have to work together. Can they keep Conrad's fate from catching up to them?
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Diana Wynne Jones
Long before fantasy became mainstream, Diana Wynne Jones was quietly rewriting its rules—building magical worlds that felt both whimsical and wise, mischievous and deeply human. Her stories didn’t just sparkle with enchantment; they carried a quiet intelligence that dared young readers to think deeper, look sideways, and always expect the unexpected.
Born in London in 1934, Jones grew up amid wartime evacuations and an often-chaotic household—experiences that would later inform the strange, shifting families and fractured realities in her fiction. She studied English at Oxford under tutors like C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, though she later remarked she learned more by not imitating them. Instead, she carved out her own voice: lyrical but grounded, funny but never flippant, magical yet steeped in emotional truth.
Chrestomanci
Diana Wynne Jones herself recommends reading Charmed Life first, followed by The Lives of Christopher Chant. Then Conrad's Fate, Witch Week, The Magicians of Caprona and the short stories can be read in any order after that. The Pinhoe Egg is set soon after Charmed Life.
The Chronicles of Chrestomanci series includes Charmed Life and The Lives of Christopher Chant in Volume 1. Volume 2 contains Witch Week and The Magicians of Caprona, and Volume 3 contains Conrad's Fate ja The Pinhoe Egg.
Chrestomanci consists of seven primary books, and includes one additional book that complement the series but is not considered mandatory reads. The current recommended reading order for the series is provided below.
Related series Chrestomanci (omnibus editions)
