Bøker av Hayden Thorne

Strange music from a legendary haunted glade can only be heard by a special boy. A grieving young man turns to the dark arts to bring his deceased lover back. A soiled and tired knight protects the innocent from the threat of a dragon. Young love blooms in a desolate garden.Familiar and original fairy tales, myths, and legends explore the complexities in a gay teen's coming-of-age through allegory and metaphor. Rain-drenched circuses, old wives' tales involving candles in windows, water-irises deep in a wood, lonely fairy kings, and magical Christmas parties. These stories not only present valuable lessons, but also provide an escape into worlds in which a gay teen can see himself as the center of adventure, romance, horror, tragedy, and triumph.Contains the following stories: "Clouds' Illusions", "Erl-King", "Out of the Depths", "The Bridge", "The Dollhouse", "The Haunted Glade", "The Knight", "The Water-Irises", and "The Winter Garden".

Following Arachnaman's bigoted, hateful attacks, life in beleaguered Vintage City finally quiets down, but it doesn't last long. Eric's father begins to show symptoms of extreme fatigue, symptoms that Eric notices in a number of other people he sees elsewhere. Along with the superheroes, he tries to find a common denominator in all this, the surprising result being a new perfume shop that hawks very strong fragrances. A familiar pair of supervillains is suspected, but before the heroes can further investigate the motives behind this threat, people exhibiting symptoms of illness are transformed in the most shocking way, throwing Vintage City in a state of panic.In the meantime, Eric monitors the Unofficial Calais Fan Club, which is now exploding with romantic Mary Sue fanfiction involving Calais as well as curious messages posted by a girl who's apparently wildly in love with the superhero. References to her making "new friends" alert Eric to suspect that she and the current mayhem being inflicted on Vintage City are somehow tied together. The stakes are now raised for Eric, whose father has become a victim to a new crime wave and whose superhero boyfriend might also be under threat. All this, and he's yet to survive school and find a job.

Book 1: It's 1815. Garrick Mortimer is a starving genius, who agrees to sign on as tutor to Desmond Hathaway, the youngest son of a vampire family living in Yorkshire. When Desmond's older brother returns from Italy for a visit and brings with him a small group of talentless poets, life in Dryden Abbey turns upside-down, mainly when Desmond meets Leigh Blaise Sherbourne, a sullen vampire poet.Book 2: As the poets continue their campaign of destruction in Dryden Abbey, Garrick struggles in the classroom, with distracted pupils eroding all of his hard work. And an unexpected love triangle further complicates things for Desmond. Through all these, Garrick and Desmond will realize that the chasm separating them as distinct species will forge a stronger bond of friendship than they expected.

Book 1: The Hunted Prince Young Henning Babkis has learned not to consider himself to be anything special. Ignored and taken for granted by his family, his education suffering as a result of their neglect, he nevertheless struggles to fit in and improve himself, though with unimpressive results. He's also learned not to expect anything more for himself, convinced that he's doomed to live his life in a deep closet, surrounded by people who don't care and who'd have given him a lot of grief if they were to find out he's gay.Things come to a sudden head when Henning's fifteenth birthday rolls around. An unexpected and terrifying attack by a creature from another world shakes up his quiet life, and Norbert steps forward with remarkable and shocking revelations as to Henning's true identity. And from a boy who's grown up to think himself as a nobody, Henning discovers a previous life in a world called Wintergrave -- a world of magic, romance, and danger.In the company of a motley bunch of former warriors, Henning must reclaim his former life and regain his powers in order to defeat an old threat. But in order to do that, he needs to convince a certain former lieutenant that the two of them were deeply bonded before and need to reform their connection now in order to get their powers back. The wrinkle? Ellery Thomas is in a happy relationship with another boy in this lifetime.Book 2: Prince of Wintergrave Being a prince in a past life yields no benefits in the present, Henning has quickly learned. His concerned housemates have made themselves his official, overbearing chaperones, Ellery appears to despise him, and Henning's limited movements slowly wear down his nerves. With his awakening process turning out to be more of a zombie-like stagger, the stakes rise inevitably as undead attacks not only increase in frequency, but also in danger levels.Henning finds some relief in the company of Alan Scott -- a handsome, smart young man he meets in a store, who displays an earnest interest in Henning. He gradually tears Henning's heartbroken attention away from Ellery, offering him promises of happiness as can only be defined in a boy's first love.In the meantime, danger now spills over to threaten innocent civilians as they get dragged into monster attacks, making it difficult for Henning and his companions to fight back while raising troubling questions about the walls between worlds being torn down by dark magic. It also reveals the effect of a soul bond on Henning and Ellery's awakening -- that is, each boy's awakening is affected by the other, and the mystery of how and why only get muddier.As Henning and his companions scramble for answers, it's a mad race against time when things happen that make them suspect Varian of crossing over to their world, searching for Henning.

The moment Emil Gogean sets foot inside Wollstone Academy's fairy tale-like campus, he realizes his freshman year in high school is bound to be a very strange one. The school itself, a uniquely romanticized boarding school for boys, boasts remarkable elements that appear to be deliberate -- as though a hidden power has chosen woodland details, a chapel ruin, and school masters who seem to hearken back to a long-gone age, with a clear purpose in mind.When strange things begin to happen to Emil, an unnerving warning from his late grandmother returns to haunt him. A warning about Emil attracting the attention of the king of the dead.Strange faces in wood patterns and mullioned windows. The apparition of a boy among the trees. The unfathomable feeling of sadness permeating the idyllic environment. Emil gradually learns that Wollstone is more than just a school, that the answers to a three-hundred-year-old mystery surrounding a tragic romance lie in the ruined stones of a small chapel and in Nature itself. And that Emil, whose appearance in school has set certain wheels in motion, will have to place himself at the mercy of three mysterious students if he wishes to learn the truth about Wollstone, the boy lost in the woods, and himself.

After his fifteenth birthday, Blythe Midwinter finds himself in a bit of a pickle. It's high time for him to be a productive member of his family, taking up work he detests in order for his older sister, Molly, to follow her dreams of success as a talented baker. Though the three orphaned Midwinter siblings -- Molly, Bertie, and Blythe -- are lucky enough to work, they still earn only enough to keep themselves clothed and fed. Blythe desperately wishes for more, and it doesn't help that his best and only friend, Jack Wicket, refuses hard, honest work in favor of good luck as the only means for quick success and instant riches.Blythe's dreams of a better life get more desperate when he attracts the attention of another boy, the youngest son of a rebellious old artist, whose family rises well above Blythe's in wealth and station. Embarrassment and shame muddle Blythe's perceptions of luck, work, and the promise of love -- that is, until Jack Wicket's foolish decision to exchange his beloved cow for a handful of magic beans forces Blythe to look past castles in the clouds and understand what it is that truly measures a man's worth.

Young Nicola Gregori has always wanted to follow in the footsteps of his father, a brilliant clock-maker who's famous for his wild, fantastical designs. But his father instead sends him to school to learn more practical matters. Nicola, stricken with infantile paralysis that left him with a deformed right leg, becomes an object of mockery and cruel jokes in school. He learns that in order to survive his daily ordeals, he needs to vanish in the crowd, to stop aspiring, to stop dreaming, and above all, to believe himself unworthy of respect and love.Tragedy strikes when Nicola turns sixteen. Gustav Renfred, an old friend of his father, takes on Nicola as his charge and whisks him away to an isolated islet filled with empty mansions and bordered by a bluebell forest. There Nicola slowly learns about the tragic story that tightly weaves together the fates of Jacopo Gregori, Gustav Renfred, and Gustav's twin sister, Constanza.Magic, impossible dreams, and unrequited love come together in Ambrosi, the Renfreds' mansion, where Nicola is caught up in a world of haunting portraits, a ghostly housekeeper, and the mysterious disappearance of Davide, Constanza's adopted son. When Nicola's invited to one of Renfred's magical masquerades, he discovers the answers to riddles as well as the mounting danger that the Renfred family faces with every passing hour.With the masquerades' existence depending on the physical and mental strength of an ailing Renfred, the task of solving the mystery of Davide's disappearance before time runs out falls on Nicola's shoulders, and he has no choice but to depend on things that he's long learned to suppress: courage, self-respect, and the desire to aim for impossible goals.

James Ellsworth is a bit jaded, especially for his young age. He hates school and longs for his parents' estate, where life is far more pleasant. Meeting new schoolmate Daniel Courtney is a much-needed distraction, one that will prove more and more engrossing as James and Daniel grow older.When his father dies, James is thrust into a position of responsibility, not just to his estate, but to his mother and sisters as well. He leans as much as he can on his friendship with Daniel, but young Courtney has his own problems. His brother, George, is all Daniel has left in the world, and when he loses his brother to a freak accident, Daniel is left alone and without prospects.All the while, the two young men are discovering a relationship that their Victorian world will never approve of. Trying to deal with their loss and their love for each other drives them apart -- James to a life of debauchery, Daniel to a life of study and work.As they grow older, James and Daniel discover that life is not what they thought it would be when they were schoolboys together, and that, even as they try to make their own way, they will always come back to one another.

Boy meets boy. Boy hates boy. Each swears never to have anything to do with the other, forever after.Unfortunately for Prince Hamlin and Prince Edouard, history has a bad habit of repeating itself, and worse, each time the two boys run across each other, things get a touch muddier as well. Destiny and free will go head-to-head, the princes' dilemma echoing the more baffling curse that's been placed on Edouard's young cousin, Princess Roderika. Doomed to prick her finger on a spindle on her fifteenth birthday and fall asleep for a hundred years as a result, Roderika's rapidly dwindling time becomes an inescapable tapestry into which Hamlin and Edouard's own fates are woven.With the help of a magician princess and a crotchety talking raven, Hamlin and Edouard not only have to outgrow prejudices, but also find the courage and the will to define their destinies, even if it were to take them a hundred years.

Orphaned and sickly, young Joscelin Charpentier, along with older sister Eulalie, is taken in by a wealthy uncle. The children cope with Uncle Marcel's cold indifference as best as they can, but Eulalie enjoys all the attention as the healthier child while Joscelin is subjected to the cruelty of a resentful nurse. Comfort and affection come his way in the person of Aunt Rosanna, a rapidly fading gentlewoman from Italy who develops and nurtures a unique bond with the lonely child. It's a bond that will be tested in the future following a night of murder and suicide, and on his return home after years of isolated study, Joscelin discovers just how deeply that connection runs as the château's long-held secrets fight to untangle themselves. Eerie muffled calls from somewhere in the château disturb the residents some nights, and Joscelin's homecoming intensifies the hauntings as the dead sense and acknowledge his presence. The mystery surrounding Aunt Rosanna's disappearance leads him to a broken iron piece with a rusted lily on one end. With only dark memories to guide him, Joscelin struggles to overcome deeply held fears in his bid to pay back a debt and bring his lost aunt home.

Edgar Cushing is a young man who has lost much until a kind and grieving widower adopts him and raises him in a loving and happy home. A fire destroys lives and hopes for the future while Edgar is in school, however, forcing him to abandon his education and seek employment to help his badly injured father. A surprisingly generous job opening draws him to an isolated house and its strange and mercurial mistress, her fiercely devoted housekeeper, and an enigmatic young artist whose connection to Bridewater House goes back two generations. For all its dreamlike and excessive splendor, however, Bridewater House has a secret of its own -- a dark, tragic one echoed in soft and creeping footfalls, a small child's calls for its mother, and the lonely grasp of a cold, invisible hand in the dark.