Garth Nix has been involved in writing for decades after graduating from the University of Canberra with a Bachelor's degree in Professional Writing in 1986. Afterward, he worked at a bookshop before becoming a sales rep and publicist at HarperCollins, where he was named senior editor in 1991.
In 1990, while working for HarperCollins, Nix published his first book, The Ragwitch. Five years later, Nix published Sabriel which won the Aurealis Award for Best Fantasy Novel and Best Young Adult Novel. Nix's success continued with 1997's Shade's Children, which was chosen as an American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults and was shortlisted for the Aurealis Awards and the Heartland Prize.
Nix started the Seventh Tower Series in 2000 with The Fall, Castle, Aenir, and Above the Veil. The series ended in 2001 with Into Battle and The Violet Keystone. In 2001, Nix also returned to the Old Kingdom of Sabriel with Lirael: Daughter of the Clayr, followed by 2003's Abhorsen.
Nix's books have been published across the world in more than thirty languages. He is working on a screenplay of Sabriel as well as a fourth novel in the Old Kingdom series.
He and his wife, Anna, live on the beach in Sydney, where Nix has settled into his career as a full-time writer.
Biography from www.epicreads.com
Sabriel by Garth Nix. The first book in the Old Kingdom series.
The country of Ancelstierre and the Old Kingdom are separated by The Wall. The Wall is guarded by an Ancelstierre army with machine guns, barbed wire, cannon … and swords, because the beings on the Old Kingdom side of the Wall are magical, unearthly and deadly. Strange things happen beyond the Wall in the Old Kingdom where the Dead do not stay dead, and Charter Magic battles Free Magic for control.
Sabriel, a girl of seventeen at boarding school in Ancelstierre, is the daughter of the Charter Mage Abhorsen, a necromancer from the Old Kingdom. Sabriel is looking forward to seeing her father during the next vacation, but when a messenger-spirit appears in her study wwith a bag of her father's belongings, she fears for her father's life. She decides she must travel north into the Old Kingdom to find out what has happened to him.
When she arrives in the Old Kingdom, she discovers Charter Magic Stones that have been destroyed and undead creatures roaming the countryside. Since it was her father's job as necromancer to make sure that the dead creatures did not return to life, she fears even more that her father may be dead himself, perhaps a victim of a Free Magic creature's attack. And if her father is dead, that means she is the next abhorsen. "Sabriel has had little experience with the random power of Free Magic or the Dead who refuse to stay dead in the Old Kingdom. She soon finds companions in Mogget, a cat whose aloof manner barely conceals its malevolent spirit, and Touchstone, a young Charter Mage long imprisoned by magic, now free in body but still trapped by painful memories. As the three travel deep into the Old Kingdom, threats mount on all sides. And every step brings them closer to a battle that will pit them against the true forces of life and death -- and bring Sabriel face-to-face with her own hidden destiny."
Summary quote from Shelfari.com
