John Anthony Bellairs (1938-1991) is the author of the fifteen acclaimed Gothic mystery novels in the Lewis Barnavelt, Anthony Monday, and Johnny Dixon series, including The House with a Clock in Its Walls (1973), The Treasure of Alpheus Winterborn (1978), and The Curse of the Blue Figurine (1983). He also is the author of The Face in the Frost (1969), a comic fantasy novel starring wizards Prospero and Roger Bacon. Born in Michigan, Bellairs earned degrees from Notre Dame and the University of Chicago and later lived and wrote in Haverhill, Massachusetts.