When Dr. Charles Coote--a noted folklorist and old friend of Professor Childermass--returns from a conference in New Orleans, he brings home a small, sinister drum. It's made entirely of black wood with red leather straps and small, white bones. Nobody takes Dr. Coote's worries about the drum very seriously, until Fergie taps it a few times and releases an unspeakable evil. Suddenly, Johnny and Fergie and the professor find themselves battling the imposing Madame Sinestra, a voodoo priestess who seeks the magical drum for her evil Caribbean cult. Spells, zombies, and voodoo demons beset our heroes and the fate of the world hangs in the balance. Can they save Dr. Coote? Will they make it out alive? This ninth book in the Johnny Dixon series was completed by Brad Strickland after John Bellairs died and it has all the spooky thrills that make these mysteries classics.

John Bellairs is beloved as a master of Gothic young adult novels and fantasies. His series about the adventures of Lewis Barnavelt and his uncle Jonathan, which includes The House with a Clock in Its Walls, is a classic. He also wrote a series of novels featuring the character Johnny Dixon. Among the titles in that series are The Curse of the Blue Figurine; The Mummy, the Will, and the Crypt; and The Spell of the Sorcerer’s Skull. His stand-alone novel The Face in the Frost is also regarded as a fantasy classic, and among his earlier works are St. Fidgeta and Other Parodies and The Pedant and the Shuffly.

Bellairs was a prolific writer, publishing more than a dozen novels before his untimely death in 1991.

Brad Strickland has written and cowritten forty-one novels, many of them for younger readers. He is the author of the fantasy trilogy Moon Dreams, Nul’s Quest, and Wizard’s Mole, and the creator of the popular horror novel Shadowshow. With his wife, Barbara, he has written for the Star Trek Young Adult book series, for Nickelodeon’s Are You Afraid of the Dark? book series, and for Sabrina, the Teenage Witch (Pocket Books). Both solo and with Thomas E. Fuller, he has written several books about Wishbone, public TV’s literature-loving dog. When he's not writing, he teaches English at Gainesville College in Gainesville, Georgia. He and Barbara have two children, Amy and Jonathan, and a daughter-in-law, Rebecca. They live and work in Oakwood, Georgia.