Wonders of the Invisible World

Wonders of the Invisible World is a young adult paranormal fantasy novel for teenagers about Aidan Lockwood, a boy living on his family's farm in small-town Temperance, Ohio. When his old friend Jarrod returns to town to finish his senior year of high school, Aidan doesn't remember their childhood friendship. However, Jarrod soon helps Aidan uncover secrets about himself, his family, and his childhood that he can barely remember, and together they uncover a secret world of spirits and of love that will change everything for Aidan.

The novel opens with the return of Jarrod, a boy who claims to know Aidan Lockwood, the protagonist of the story. Aidan has been living a relatively peaceful life on his family's farm; they have lived on the same property in Temperance, Ohio for generations, and Aidan feels he belongs there. However, when Jarrod arrives, Aidan begins to wonder about his connection to this boy he can't recall having met before. Jarrod claims that he and Aidan were best friends as children, and that Jarrod had to leave town after a series of incidents with visions that unsettled everyone living in Temperance.

Jarrod has been living in a distant town with his father, after a series of strange visions caused a stir at their middle school. Jarrod was seeing things – specifically, he recalls seeing a creepy man in a black suit standing beside their teacher as she taught, whom no one else could see. The next day, the teacher died, and Jarrod had to leave town or risk being seen as “other.” At first, Aidan doesn't remember any of these shared memories. Jarrod brings Aidan to a lake they visited as kids, and Aidan begins to have stirrings of their time together. Confused, Aidan confronts his mom about these lost memories and a series of strange prophetic dreams, and she reveals the truth.



Aidan's mother is clairvoyant – she has paranormal, psychic powers that allow her to see into other spiritual realms. Aidan's mother tells him that she put a “dust cover” over Aidan's memories of Jarrod, in order to save him from a family curse that she fears will ruin his life. To further complicate things, she demands that Aidan not talk to his father or brother about his dreams or memories. This leaves Aidan feeling isolated, forcing him to go to Jarrod to try to find an explanation for his experiences.

As Aidan spends more time with Jarrod, he becomes more in tune with his own psychic powers. He begins to see symbols of death – particularly, he sees a recurrent white stag and the same man in the black suit that Jarrod had seen before their teacher's death. Using these visions and his own sometimes faulty memories, Aidan begins to put together his family's secrets, coming up with a plan to save them all from their inherited curse.

Meanwhile, Aidan and Jarrod find themselves falling in love. Aidan soon learns that Jarrod hasn't returned to battle past demons – he was kicked out of his father's house when he revealed to his father that he was gay. Though Aidan has never been in a relationship with a man before, he is entranced by Jarrod, with whom he feels he has a special bond. Aidan makes it his mission to nurture this new relationship as he tries to help his family find their way out of their curse, using his psychic powers and Jarrod's own psychic intuitions to guide him.



Featuring both common teen troubles and issues of the paranormal, Aidan finds himself fighting to save the lives of his father, brother, and himself from a curse that has picked off Lockwood men one by one. He only hopes he can stop the curse before it's too late.

Christopher Barzak is an author of young adult novels and short stories, many of which have a paranormal twist. His titles include One for Sorrow, The Gone Away Place, and others. His debut novel won the Crawford Award among other prizes, and his second novel won a James Tiptree Jr. Award and a Nebula Award. Barzak grew up in Ohio and attended college there before working outside Tokyo, Japan as a middle school English teacher for two years. His first novel, One for Sorrow, was made into a feature film titled Jamie Marks is Dead.