by 
Heart of the Staff – Complete Series by Carol Marrs Phipps and Tom Phipps
Know More
Book 1
Minuet Dewin, eldest daughter of the wizard Razzmorten, practically raised her half sister Leeuh. For many years, Minuet is Leeuh’s passionate champion. As time passes, Leeuh grows awful and impossible to defend. Whilst undoing her dangerous pranks, Minuet finds herself the target of her hatred and jealousy. And when they fall for the same prince, it looks like war.
Suddenly Leeuh vanishes. She returns years later, compliant and sweet as she always should have been. Should Minuet trust her, or will it be the very death of her?
Book 2
Frantic to find out if she really is the daughter of an evil sorceress, Rose makes a rash departure on a quest to the Chokewoods, a forest of horrors which no one in her kingdom dares enter.
Her brother Lukus blackmails her into traveling with him. Together they discover that trolls, Elves and cyclopses really do exist as do the perilous visions in the Valley of Illusions.
In the Chokewoods, they survive a horde of flesh eating devils, the fruit of the choke oak and a village of beasts who prepare to eat them. A hag crashes through the treetops and takes them away to a mad forest of her own where she turns them into thralls and taunts them with threats before they manage to escape and return home.
Book 3
A great evil awakens to shatter Niarg’s peaceful world.
In her remote island keep off the shores of Head, the fearsome sorceress Demonica at last learns that her granddaughter Spitemorta has come by the long lost Staff of Power.
She leaves immediately for Goll and offers to teach Spitemorta how to develop her considerable powers. Spitemorta accepts at once, thereby uniting the two most dangerous sorceresses of the age, determined to conquer the world. When they find the Stone Heart, making the Staff the most powerful tool of all time, it seems that nothing can stop them from crushing Niarg and conquering the entire world. King Hebraun of Niarg is dead and not a single Elf is left alive in the Jutwoods.
Book 4
Spitemorta’s husband, King James, tries to ride out of Castle Goll with her Great Staff of Power, but is tortured by Demonica and her and locked away to die in the the dungeon. He escapes across the Great Barrier Mountains, just as Spitemorta and Demonica destroy Castle Niarg, sending Queen Minuet and Wizard Razzmorten and the people of Niarg fleeing to the Pitmaster’s Kettles.
Book 5
Niarg has fallen. The dragons have fled from their caves. Confident that Queen Minuet and Wizard Razzmorten are dead, and that the trolls have eaten every last Elf, Spitemorta brings down the last hamlets of the Northern Continent as she prepares to conquer the rest of the world.
But Queen Minuet and Wizard Razzmorten do live and are hiding in the crater of Mount Bedd with the Fairy guardians of the Forest Primeval, where they wait for what remains of their army before fleeing to the Black Desert to live beneath its burning sands with the dragons and all of the Elves who escaped Demonica’s great troll raid, down their hidden river.
Book 6
With the murder of her husband, King Artamus of Gwael, Queen Spitemorta at last rules the world. She declares herself Omnipotent Empress and moves into her monstrous new castle in Niarg. And with her tools of power, the Great Staff and Crystal Heart, she believes she is invincible.
But then come tidings that four Elves have appeared in Niarg. These Elves should have been killed and eaten by her trolls, twenty years ago. And with these Elves returns the threat that the ancient Elven Prophecy predicting her downfall and death could still come to pass.
And somewhere far away, Ariel and Daniel, the very twins foretold in the Prophecy have become more powerful than any sorceress or wizard ever known. Together they could be invincible.
But can they destroy Spitemorta and her tools of power? The time has come and one thing is certain. Either the twins and the rebellion will meet their doom, or Spitemorta and her minions will.
A Word from the Author
I grew up on stories tying our farm to the wilderness before it. When Dad got Alzheimer’s and stunned all of us by selling it, I was left adrift in the same bland post-industrial anonymity and frustration faced by everyone else in the world. It’s not that I deserve better, but it did leave me searching endlessly for one last good place, a place still enchanting enough to be worth getting lost in.
Shortly after I fell in love with Carol, she came up with the land of Niarg, and soon we found that it was indeed good enough to get lost in with our characters as they struggled to sort out just what was to become of Good and Evil in The Heart of the Staff. And what would become of the world if some dark power came to rule the whole of it? Would someone manage to bring it down?
(Carol Marrs Phipps & Tom Phipps, June 2016)
Get It
Tweet
