Pure dead magic, by Deb Gliori

This is the first book in a series of 6 titles.  It is witty, laugh out loud fantasy and adventure rolled into one.  Sort of Harry Potter meets the computer age.  Imagine if you will a Castle in Scotland where the Strega Borgia family live.  Three children Titus aged 12, Pandora aged 10 and their baby sister Damp.  Their father has mysteriously disappeared their distraught mother is practicing, but not succeeding, to be a witch.  The house has a cook who cooks very badly, a butler called Latch and an assortment of beasts who live either in the dungeon or in the moat.  Enter the new Nanny, Flora McLachlan , a cross between Mrs Doubtfire and Mary Poppins, who has magical abilities but doesn’t want to use them.  As the book unfolds we learn that Titus’ father, Luciano, has been kidnapped by the mafia, headed up by his half brother, Don Lucifer, a thoroughly nasty piece of work.  Don Lucifer not only wants Luciano dead but also all the rest of Luciano’s family. 

As Titus and Pandora endeavour to find out where their father has gone, Luciano makes email contact with them and some how Pandora, while using one of her mother’s disposable wands, manages to shrink
Damp so that she can fit into the computer and be sent via email out into the internet.   Getting Damp back and rescuing their father will require a lot of ingenuity and help from unusual sources as the mafia close in on the castle and Luciano’s fate becomes very precarious.

Rita


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