Fans of Roald Dahl and Neil Gaiman will love this inventive and “captivating” ( Kirkus Reviews ) middle grade fantasy about a girl who uses a family heirloom to travel to fantastical worlds that may be more dangerous than they appear. Twelve-year-old Rosemary has been an artist her whole life and especially loves drawing the incredible places from her Aunt Jo’s stories. But illustrating the stories doesn’t mean Rose believes them. And when Aunt Jo gives Rose a pocket watch with instructions on how to use it to access magical dream worlds, Rose just thinks Aunt Jo is being peculiar again. While Rose is sleeping, however, she enters a fantastical place where each hour of the pocket watch takes her to a different world. There, Rose befriends a trio of outcasts with special powers and joins their war against the ominous Tall Man. When a bully steals Rose’s watch, she can only look on in horror as dream and reality collide and he’s sucked into the Eleventh Hour. Now, Rosemary must gather magic from all twelve dream worlds to rescue the boy who makes her life a living nightmare. Quinn Sosna-Spear was named a California Young Playwright at seventeen and went on to study at the University of Southern California. She has since written books, films, and comics. Her novels are inspired by her childhood and the untimely death of her own mother. Quinn hopes to share with all readers—particularly those struggling with loss—the humor, poignancy, and adventure in such things…as dreary and impossible as they may seem. 1. The World Inside the Watch THE WORLD INSIDE THE WATCH Magic does exist, but only we know how to reach it.” That’s what my aunt Jo used to tell me as I was falling asleep on her couch when I was younger. The fireplace was warm and crackled, her blankets were soft and heavy, and her hands would scratch through my hair as she whispered—only for me to hear. “You see, Rose, there’s a place where anything is possible, and when you go there, you will become more powerful than anyone you’ve ever met.” “Me? But I’m small.” “That doesn’t matter when you have magic, does it?” “How do I get there?” I’d ask, although I already knew the answer. “You use the watch, of course.” Jo would pull the long gold chain from her pocket slowly, link by link, until the pocket watch came into view. It was perfectly round, and the gold was as bright as the fire in the hearth. On the top was a loop, attached to which was a thin gold chain with braided links. Next to the loop was a button. Jo pressed it, and the sides, separated into twelve petals, fell open like a flower. Pictures were carved on the back of each segment of the gold shell. They depicted magical landscapes that could exist only in Jo’s fantasy world. In the middle was the clock, with long bronze hands that ticked silently. The first time she showed me, my hand reached out on its own, and Jo clicked it shut. Only Jo was allowed to touch the pocket watch. “It’s not yours yet, my love—but one day it will be, and then you will hold the key that will allow you to enter the other world.” “When can I go?” “When I’m ready to give it to you,” she’d say. I knew all twelve realms inside the watch by heart. Jo had told me about her adventures in them and had painted me dozens of pictures. In Ten O’Clock you turned into an animal to escape the giant flowers that followed you. Jo said she was a mink there, which she explained was a lot like if a snake and a hamster had a baby. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a mink. She thought I might be a fox. I always liked foxes after that. Then in Eleven O’Clock you could create anything you could think of just by drawing it. If you wanted your own pet dragon, all you had to do was learn to draw one. But you had to be careful, because once it was created, the dragon would take on a life of its own. It might bite you or singe off your eyebrows. But Jo didn’t just tell me about the magic, even though that was the fun part—she also told me about the dangers. You had to be extra careful in the magical clock world, because whenever something is that amazing… there must always be something about it that’s equally frightening. “And it will be your job, Rosey-Posey, to save it one day.” “Why me?” “Because I’m too old and because you’re the perfect mix of smart, kind, and special .” That was always the best part of Jo’s stories, when she told me I was special. No one else believed that, and so I would listen to her as she scratched my head, and drew pictures for me, and gave me lessons on how to survive in the magical realms. I stayed awake for hours more than I would any other night, just to hide in her stories for a little longer. She even had a book about the world. The book was encased in red leather and bound with gold thread. The title was carved in cursive writing that I had thought was just perfect. The middle of the letters were gold as well, chipping only slightly. They read: The Thirteenth H