The Glass Tower - Catherine Fisher

Catherine Fisher's The Glass Tower is actually three short stories in one volume.

The first story is The Conjuror's Game; it's a game that should never have been started. Young Alick, whose father owns a bookshop, meets a conjuror named Luke who intrigues him so much that Alick ends up following him to places he should not go. Luke must then help Alick replace the Tree game piece, which Alick had no business removing, on the central square of the game board before the Knights and Ravens bring their eternal battle rampaging through the snowbound villages of Halcombe Great Wood.

The Candle Man is a tale set in the Severn Estuary. A fiddler named Meurig was cursed in infancy by a mysterious woman who tied his soul to a candle and swore that when it burnt away, he would die. Meurig takes a job at the Sea Wall Inn, playing live music for the customers as he resumes his inherited role as Watchman of the Sea Wall, a role held by his father and grandfather before him. It's his responsibility to maintain the sea wall and ensure it continues to protect the town from the incursions of the sea up the River Severn, incursions which Hafren, the river goddess encourages. She tries to take Meurig's candle from him, after his young friends Conor and Sara manage to recover it from their old schoolteacher Mr Caristan, into whose hands it had accidentally fallen two years earlier. Meurig and the children then find themselves engaged in a battle of wits with Hafren, with Meurig's soul as the stake.

Young Jamie finds a mysterious magical book that talks to Jamie, via an unknown hand writing on its pages and offers to lead him to Fintan's Tower. But who are the three stranger men who pursue him and his sister Jennie ? And how can they know whom to trust when Fintan's glass tower contains unimaginable terrors and treasures, and the only time they have available to achieve a rescue is the two minutes of a total eclipse of the sun ?