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|title=Charmed Life (The Chrestomanci)

|author=Diana Wynne Jones

|date=April 2007

|isbn=978-0007255290

}}

Cat Chant and his elder sister Gwendolen are orphans. Their parents have drowned in a paddle-steamer disaster and they are looked after by a certain Mrs Sharp, a Certified Witch. The Fund set up after the catastrophe helps with conventional education, while Gwendolen is receiving magic lessons from Mr Nostrum. Cat's and Gwendolen's lives change completely when a mysterious, powerful and a rather dashing personage - "You Know Who" - Chrestomanci himself takes the orphans to live with his family in the Chrestomanci castle. Gwendolen has high hopes for learning Advanced Magic and believes she's on the way to fame and power , but for the time being her increasingly more outrageous jinxes result in her magic being taken away from her: what is a witch to do, if her hopes for ruling the world are so cruelly squashed? What is the power the Castle is exerting on the children? Who are all those people surrounding Chrestomanci? And who is Chrestomanci himself?