Nocturnal Academy 3: Immaterial Girl

Nocturnal Academy students Alice, Toby and Carla have just finished their first hectic year at the exclusive school for Supernaturals, and just want to enjoy their summer holidays like normal thirteen year-olds. They decide to visit an exciting new circus that has just set up in their home town of Appleton.

However, they soon discover that this circus is not the ordinary travelling carnival they expected. The ringmaster, a mysterious character named Darmin Gallis, is actually a powerful mage who has managed to capture and hypnotise numerous shape-shifters so he can use them his bizarre acts. He coerces Toby into joining him, and Alice and Carla must turn to the Nocturnal Academy for help to rescue him from the ringmaster’s evil clutches.

They return the next day with the werewolf professor Albrecht Longenfang, but Darmin Gallis proves a far more formidable opponent than any of them expected. Alice finds herself riding a bus home alone, her memory wiped and replaced by an irrational fear of circuses.

How can Alice save Toby, Carla and Professor Longenfang when she doesn’t even remember what happened to them?

Also available:

Nocturnal Academy

Nocturnal Academy 2 - Teacher's Pet

Nocturnal Academy 3 - Immaterial Girl

Nocturnal Academy 5 - Mage Against the Machine

Nocturnal Academy 6 - The Da Vinci Codex

Nocturnal Academy 7 - School of Thought

Nocturnal Academy 8 - The Lonely House

Alice Dibble has finally made it to the Nocturnal Academy, and is ready to start lessons at the exclusive private school. She believes she is about to be trained to become a nocturnal defender of the Earth against the chaotic hordes of the Immaterium, and is ready to face up to this noble challenge.

Unfortunately, when she arrives she discovers that the Nocturnal Academy isn’t that different from her old school. Lessons are tedious, equipment is old and broken, bats roosting in the rafters keep dropping presents on her notebook - and then there is scullery duty, which involves taking rubbish out to the epic compost heap, known to swallow children whole.

Alice’s new friend Toby, once a popular kid at her primary school, has become an outcast; her old enemy Carla needs help to learn how to change into her new animal form, and a little omniwere boy who can only change into tiny creatures has developed a crush on her.

Alice must also learn how to use her new vampire powers responsibly without succumbing to the lure of the darkness.

To make matters worse, Professor Abbacus, a teacher Alice thought liked her, now seems to want to kill her. It is all Alice can do to keep one step ahead of him and all of his devious, convoluted plans to punish her for the destruction of the Holloway Grimoire.

Also available:

Nocturnal Academy

Nocturnal Academy 3 - Immaterial Girl

Nocturnal Academy 4 - The Supernatural Circus

Nocturnal Academy 5 - Mage Against the Machine

Nocturnal Academy 6 - The Da Vinci Codex

Nocturnal Academy 7 - School of Thought

Nocturnal Academy 8 - The Lonely House

Alice Dibble returns to the Nocturnal Academy for her second year to find that the ghost Baron Falkenstein has been made Vice Principal. He has all sorts of nasty plans lined up the school, which he believes is suffering such a bad reputation because of a serious decline in discipline.

A new boy named Harley joins the Academy. He was told he was an earth elemental, but he doesn’t feel any connection with the Earth at all. A genius and a misfit who was home-schooled until recently, he has no people skills and immediately rubs Professor Abbacus – and half his classmates – up the wrong way. Only Alice dares to become his friend.

Alice hopes her year 8 will be slightly less eventful than her year 7, but almost immediately things start to go wrong. Her brand new computer has sticky keys, other kids are starting to call her “unlucky Alice” and Baron Falkenstein catches her in the corridor after hours and puts her on detention cleaning fungus off dungeon walls.

Then she discovers something dark and evil hiding deep in the bowels of the school.

Alice, Harley and Professor Abbacus must journey into an entirely different realm to face this new danger, a collusion of threats from both outside the school and within. The entire Nocturnal Academy itself is at risk, and if these beings succeed in their vile plan, the entire school will be wiped off the face of the Earth.

Also available:

Nocturnal Academy

Nocturnal Academy 2 - Teacher's Pet

Nocturnal Academy 3 - Immaterial Girl

Nocturnal Academy 4 - The Supernatural Circus

Nocturnal Academy 6 - The Da Vinci Codex

Nocturnal Academy 7 - School of Thought

Nocturnal Academy 8 - The Lonely House

A supposedly routine visit to the Nocturnal Academy by a Department of Education public servant was actually instigated by the mysterious Church of the Stigmata, who have set up in Appleton. They are actively recruiting new followers, including the mother of Alice Dibble's friend Nick and her own father's girlfriend Janice Cooper. They appear to want to close the Academy down, but are really after something else, an extremely powerful tome of Magick hidden within the school.

When Alice returns to school for term 2, Professor Abbacus devises a plan to sneak her into the church by disguising her beneath a magically enhanced holographic projector. She sits through a bizarre sermon, but at the end a strange monk appears and she realises he can detect her. It seems he is a technomage who shares Abbacus's affinity for machines.

An old schoolmate of Alice's returns to Appleton and claims he can help. Believing he can redeem himself, this boy tries to sneak into the Church of the Stigmata but is captured by the priest Father Donelli and the monk, a formidable Jesuit half-elf known as Marco the Hunter.

When her friend fails to return, Alice tries to tell Professor Abbacus the truth. Unfortunately he loses his temper with her, and she decides to save the boy on her own. She runs into the church - and discovers the true, horrible secret behind the Church of the Stigmata.

Also available:

Nocturnal Academy

Nocturnal Academy 2 - Teacher's Pet

Nocturnal Academy 3 - Immaterial Girl

Nocturnal Academy 4 - The Supernatural Circus

Nocturnal Academy 5 - Mage Against the Machine

Nocturnal Academy 7 - School of Thought

Nocturnal Academy 8 - The Lonely House

In the sequel to Nocturnal Academy 6, two groups are in a desperate race against time to stop the evil demon lord Oradhur from reaching the Nocturnal Academy’s echo on the Astral Plane and stealing the Da Vinci Codex.

Alice, Madam Nocturna, Lord Eldritch, Marco the Hunter and Andre make up one team, and they are closely followed by Abbacus, Longenfang, Toby and Carla. Both parties contain some of the Nocturnal Academy’s most powerful individuals and are confident they can defeat one possessed human.

But Oradhur is a formidable mage with his own powerful spells as well as his victim’s abilities, and manages to elude both groups. He reaches the Astral Academy and breaks inside, leading his pursuers through the echo school’s convoluted defence mechanisms.

Alice, Toby, Carla and Andre find themselves face to face with the monster that once tried to invade their school through its computer system. Can they defeat this evil being before he gets his talons on one of the most powerful spellbooks in existence?

Also available:

Nocturnal Academy

Nocturnal Academy 2 – Teacher’s Pet

Nocturnal Academy 3 – Immaterial Girl

Nocturnal Academy 4 – the Supernatural Circus

Nocturnal Academy 5 - Mage Against the Machine

Nocturnal Academy 6 – The Da Vinci Codex

NOcturnal Academy 7 - School of Thought

Nocturnal Academy 8 - The Lonely House

While Alice and her father are visiting the newly reopened Appleton Museum, Alice notices a dedication plaque on the wall from something called the Lonely House Foundation. She remembers the Lonely House from her run with Andre and the Nocturnal Academy teachers through the Astral Plane, where they helped to close a rift to the Immaterium.

But what is the Lonely House Foundation doing in Appleton? What are its intentions? Is it a good or evil organisation?

Alice and her friends are now in year 9, and apart from the occasional fight between Toby and Carla, and Professor Longenfang’s drunkenness, things have been uneasily quiet at the Nocturnal Academy.

Then Longenfang realises he needs help because he has lost his Beast, and is sent on a spirit quest into the depths of the Sub-Astral Plane. He is accompanied by Toby and Carla, who each had their own issues to deal with.

Alice stays behind, overjoyed that she is not the centre of attention for once. But then she receives a call from a near-hysterical Janice Cooper, who claims she saw demons roaming the grounds at a party hosted by the Lonely House Foundation. Now Janice possesses the ability to see through glamours and Magick, Alice believes her and goes with her to see what’s going on.

They discover that the Lonely House is actually a conduit to a realm even darker than the Immaterium, containing a trapped demon-god from before the dawn of time itself, a monstrous creature who wants to destroy the entire universe.

Also available:

Nocturnal Academy

Nocturnal Academy 2 – Teacher’s Pet

Nocturnal Academy 3 – Immaterial Girl

Nocturnal Academy 4 – the Supernatural Circus

Nocturnal Academy 5 - Mage Against the Machine

Nocturnal Academy 6 – The Da Vinci Codex

Nocturnal Academy 7 – School of Thought

Nocturnal Academy Omnibus – Books 1-3