Forthcoming: A Wizard of Mars, a new YA novel by Diane Duane

A Wizard of Mars, the ninth book in American science fiction and fantasy author Diane Duane’s Young Wizards Series, is scheduled to be published as a hardcover by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in April 2010. A voluminous novel of more than 550 pages, here’s the promotional piece for A Wizard of Mars:

Young wizards Kit Rodriguez and Nita Callahan are part of an elite team investigating the mysterious "message in a bottle" that holds clues to the long-lost inhabitants of Mars. But not even wizardry is enough to cope with the strange events that unfold when the "bottle" is uncorked and life emerges once more to shake the Red Planet with its own perilous and baffling brand of magic.

The good news is that the Martians seem friendly. The bad news is that now they’re free to pick up on a long-dormant plan that could change the shape of more than one world -- and they don't mind using their well-intentioned rescuers to achieve their goals. Kit’s fascination with all things Martian unexpectedly enmeshes him in a terrible age-old conflict, turning him into both a potential key to its solution and a tool that in the wrong hands threatens the human race.

Only Kit has a shot at defusing the threat. But when he vanishes from the Mars of here and now, his fellow wizards are uncertain where his true loyalties lie. Nita’s determination to find the truth -- and Kit -- sends her into battle against an implacable enemy who may be conquerable only by violating wizardry’s most basic tenets. As the shadow of interplanetary war stretches ever more darkly over both worlds, Kit and Nita must master the strange and ancient synergy binding them to Mars and its last inhabitants. If they fail, the history that left Mars lifeless will repeat itself on Earth.

Diane Duane is the author of nearly fifty SF&F novels. Four of her Star Trek novels have been The New York Times bestsellers.