Dangerous adventures continue for the djinni Bartimaeus and his master, seventeen-year-old Nathaniel, a powerful magician who is serving as England's minister of information.
When the world's deadliest terrorist organization, Scorpia, stirs up trouble in the Middle East, it is up to fourteen-year-old MI6 agent Alex Rider to thwart their plans.
In their continuing adventures, magician's apprentice Nathaniel, now fourteen years old, and the djinni Bartimaeus travel to Prague to locate the source of a golem's power before it destroys London.
Alex Rider does battle with a charity broker con artist who has invested millions of dollars in a form of genetically modified corn that can release an airborne strain of virus capable of knocking out an entire country in one day.
When young Edward VI of England and a poor boy who resembles him exchange places, each learns something about the other's very different station in life.