Oct 25 2013 9:00am  The Autumnal Genius of John Bellairs    To a
purist, there are really only three New Zebedee books that
count: The House with a Clock in Its Walls (1973), The Figure in
the Shadows (1975), and The Letter, the Witch, and the Ring
(1976). After that, it would be 1993 before another New Zebedee
book appeared, and this one would be authored by Brad Strickland
based on an unfinished manuscript by Bellairs, who left behind
two unfinished manuscripts and two one-page outlines that would
become the next three New Zebedee books. Ultimately, the series
would total twelve volumes, but the first is the one that
captured lightning in a bottle and is, as far as I’m concerned,
the only one that counts.  Wracked with high gothic weather,
lonely, elliptical, and suffused with a sense of a damp and
creeping doom, The House with a Clock in Its Walls is set in
1948 and it begins with fat little Lewis Barnavelt arriving in
the town of New Zebedee, MI. Unpopular, unable to swim, bad at
sports, and obsessed with