Jane Johnson

A volume of seventeenth-century embroidery patterns that also contains faint diary entries brings together the lives of two women of different eras--Cat Tregenna, kidnapped by Muslim pirates in 1625, and Julia Lovat, a modern-day woman out to authenticate Cat's story.

Having learned from a talking cat that he and his sisters are the half-elfin royalty of a parallel world called Eidolon, twelve-year old Ben Arnold attempts to stop his evil uncle from smuggling magical creatures between the two worlds to sell on the black market.