Nina Blazon Der Bund der Wölfe (The Secret Society of Wolves) Sauerländer Verlag, January 2006, 206 pp ISBN: 3-7941-7039-3 Blanka is just sixteen when she is sent to a boarding school by her adoptive parents. This school, she discovers, has a mysterious and decidedly spooky history, being built on the foundations of an old medieval convent in which the nuns and other occupants had been accused of witchcraft and often tortured to death. Now ghost stories abound and there is a haunted feeling about the place. There is also a secret society - calling itself the Society of Wolves - who display a bullying attitude towards her. She bravely tries to shrug off their threats and insults, but when she stumbles over the body of a woman at the bottom of the stairs she is catapulted into a sequence of nightmarish events that lead her to uncover the details surrounding the death, find out about the underworld of the convent, and learn how the Society of Wolves continue to practise barbaric rituals. Blanka enlists the help of Niklas, a young medical student at the local university, and between them they gather information about the dead woman and begin piecing together the history of the convent at the time of the witchcraft trials. But while energetically gathering these facts, Blanka finds it difficult to shake off an uncanny feeling that the 'wolves', the warden, or other people she doesn't know about are out to harm her. And of course she is right. Niklas, she discovers, has lied about his background and is not a medical student at all. He has come to Germany in the hope of finding his mother who left home when he was five years old. She also learns that the Society of Wolves also practise the occult arts and work on developing paranormal skills, including telepathy and thought manipulation. And so it goes on. Underground tunnels, sinister hints, a pitiful creature, half wolf, half man, used by the society as a mascot, medium and totem… Most parents make mistakes over their children's education, but Blanka's foster-parents take the biscuit. Perhaps that's one reason why this glorious load of spell-binding adventure will go down a real treat.