Discover this “shivery treat” ( Booklist ), a funny, fantastical adventure from the bestselling author of My Teacher Is an Alien and the upcoming Diary of a Mad Brownie . Now available in hardcover! Toad-in-a-Cage Castle was filled with secrets. Secrets such as the hidden passages that led to every room, the long stairway that wound down to the dungeon, and the weird creature named Igor who lived there. But it was the mysterious night noises that bothered William the most—the strange moans that drifted through the halls of the castle where he was raised. He wanted to know what caused them. Then one night, he found out… Bruce Coville has published more than one hundred books, which have sold more than sixteen million copies. Among his most popular titles are My Teacher Is an Alien , Into the Land of the Unicorns , and The Monster’s Ring . Bruce also founded Full Cast Audio, a company that creates recordings of the best in children’s and young adult literature. He lives in Syracuse, New York, with his wife, Katherine. Visit him at BruceCoville.com. Katherine Coville is an artist, a sculptor, and a dollmaker who specializes in highly detailed images of creatures never before seen in this world. She has illustrated several books written by her husband, Bruce Coville, including Goblins in the Castle , Aliens Ate My Homework , and the Space Brat series. Bruce and Katherine live in Syracuse, New York, with a varying assortment of pets and children. Goblins in the Castle CHAPTER ONE DISCOVERY IN THE DUNGEON I was found on the drawbridge of Toad-in-a-Cage Castle on a cold December night. I was naked, they tell me, wrapped only in a blanket and tucked in a basket. If the Baron had not been out riding that night he would not have seen me, and I would have been buried beneath the snow by morning. To the surprise of Hulda, his housekeeper, the Baron didn’t send me away. Instead, he hired a nurse to come and take care of me. I liked Nurse, despite her unusual fondness for toads. However when I was about five she fell into the moat and was eaten by something or other. After that I pretty much took care of myself. I had the run of the castle and could go anywhere I wanted—except the North Tower, which was always locked. Naturally, I wanted to know what was up there. But I learned early on not to ask about it. Questions upset people. Not that there were many people to upset; only the Baron, Hulda, and Karl, the young man who tended the library. I liked Karl. He was very smart, and when he had time he would give me lessons. However, this did not happen often, because caring for the library was a big job. (The Baron owned so many books he had had to knock out the walls between seven rooms to hold them all!) Most of what I knew about the outside world came from the books Karl shared with me. The library itself was my favorite place in the castle. Its floor was covered by a thick, soft carpet, its walls made of dark wood. Mazes of tall, book-crammed shelves filled the interior. The windows, which curved out from the side of the building, were twice as tall as a man; the huge velvet curtains that covered them used to be red and were still soft and warm. On cold days I liked to take a book and curl up on one of the sills. Wrapping a curtain around me like a blanket, I would alternate between reading and staring out at the distant village, the forest, the mountains. I often wondered what it was like out there, beyond the castle walls that I had never left. From one of the windows I could see the North Tower, which was shrouded in mist on even the sunniest of days. • • • One rainy evening in October Karl was repairing books, Hulda was sleeping, and the Baron was hidden away with one of the mysterious visitors that sometimes came to the castle gate. I was on my own, as usual. For some reason—perhaps because the voices that moaned along the hallway outside my room had been so loud the night before—I couldn’t settle down to read. I went to my room and played with Mervyn, the rat I had tamed the year before. When he ran off, I decided to go to bed. Slipping out of my clothes, I pulled on my nightshirt, then drew aside the curtain surrounding my bed and climbed beneath the covers. I couldn’t sleep. A streak of lightning sizzled through the night. I liked to watch lightning, so I got up and sat by my window. But the lightning did not continue. After a while I grew tired of watching the thick drops splat against the glass and decided to go exploring. I had been exploring the castle for years and still hadn’t discovered everything about it—partly because it was so huge, partly because it had so many secret passages and hidden rooms. These were what I looked for when I explored. To find them I pushed bricks, moved picture frames, and fiddled with the knobs carved in the mantelpieces of the fireplaces. Lighting a candle, I went to my own fireplace, which was tall enough to stand in. I pushed a cer