Watch Hollow Books in Order

The Watch Hollow books center on siblings Lucy and Oliver Tinker, who arrive with their father at Blackford House after a hard stretch in family life. Their father is a gifted clocksmith, and the job that brings them to the house seems simple at first, fix a huge old clock and earn enough money to breathe again. Of course, nothing about Blackford House is simple. Hidden inside it is a world of gears, secrets, and living wooden animals who are tied to the house's strange magic.

Blackford House is really the heart of the series.

The house stands in the woods around Watch Hollow, and those woods matter just as much as the walls and staircases. They feel old, watchful, and full of things that have been waiting a very long time. In Watch Hollow, Lucy and Oliver discover that the great clock does much more than tell time, and that its failing has opened the door to the Garr, a vicious force pushing in from the shadows. Much of the fun comes from watching the children learn the house's rules while trying to stay alive inside them.

The tone sits in a sweet spot between fantasy, mystery, and a kid-sized haunted house story. Funaro gives readers talking animals, secret passages, mechanical wonders, and a genuine sense of danger, but he also keeps the emotional focus close. Lucy and Oliver are not action heroes dropped into a spooky set piece. They are a brother and sister trying to make sense of grief, loyalty, and the scary possibility that this eerie place might actually become home.

In The Alchemist's Shadow, the series tightens the screws. A governess arrives from England with the Kojima twins, Agatha and Algernon, who claim a connection to Blackford House and immediately upset the balance Lucy and Oliver thought they had won. Soon the house is cursed and begins turning itself into a shifting labyrinth. That change pushes the children into uneasy alliances, because surviving the house now means trusting people they do not fully understand while a new monster stalks the halls.

Every hallway feels like it could change its mind.

If you like middle grade fantasy where the setting behaves like a living puzzle, this series delivers that in a big way. The appeal is not just the monsters, though there are plenty of those. It is the mix of atmosphere and heart, the sense that courage here means staying kind, staying curious, and protecting the people and creatures who have become your own. Start with Watch Hollow, then move to The Alchemist's Shadow for the full story.